MusePaper:
April 5th, 2004
Bush Uses Gas Crunch to
Push Apocalyptic "Energy" Bill
by Mickel Adzema
It had to happen. The things we discuss on this site are
hardly analytically aloof from the real events of the world.
While it might seem that way at times, when Stan Grof talks about
"Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution: The
Psychological Roots of Human Violence and Greed," he refers to
actual historical evils that have occurred . . . and are still
occurring!
And so it is that since February 9th, 2004, Primal
Spirit's homepage has been in "moratorium." An
Energy Bill has passed the House and is two Senators — the Bush
Administration on April 1st said only one Senator — short of
passing the most apocalyptic environmental legislation in
history. The Bush Administration is actually using the fact of
the record-level gas prices as a prod to pass this
legislation. This, despite the fact that, as John Kerry points
out ("Drilling
for Dollars"), the oil industry is where Bush, Jr., has
made his money and the whole scheme was cooked up by Bush and Cheney
with the help of Oil and Gas CEOs. Need we mention that the
oil and gas industry is on record as being among the biggest
contributors to Republicans and to Bush-Cheney in
particular!
If all this were not enough, Bush has shown his complicity
with rising gas prices. Where former Democratic
Administrations have worked internationally to form alliances, make
friends, and therefore have leverage and influence when it comes to
the actions of foreign entities — OPEC, for example, the Bush
Administration has thumbed its nose at the world community (the
Kyoto Treaty, the Iraq War, etc. etc.). And so it is that when
this past week (3/29/04 - 4/2/04) OPEC decided to reduce oil
production, thereby causing a worldwide further increase in oil and
gas prices at a time when Bush's economic policies are already
threatening a worldwide recession, Bush's only response was a
"request" that OPEC increase oil production.
Rising
gas prices are already putting some people out of work, as the
Nightly News has been pointing out this past week. And while
some of us might not be overly concerned about the financial
prospects of our cab and limo drivers, let us not forget that they
represent only the tip of an iceberg of dependence on gas and oil
that permeates all business in this country, especially small
business, but even large corporations. And with that we have
rising prices for everything, lost jobs, lost businesses and
industries, and deeper recession. As the loyal opposition has
pointed out in response to the Bush Administration's meager response
to OPEC: Democrats, if they were in the White House, would be
doing much more than "requesting" that OPEC increase
production. (See, for example, "John
Kerry's Plan to Lower Gas Prices to Fuel Economy")
One has to wonder if the Bush Administration — since the oil
industry profits from rising gas prices and since gas shortages can be used
as a
spur to pass the Energy Bill — is actually welcoming (if not
behind-the-scenes encouraging) the decisions of OPEC to limit its
production.
We the people are left with only one immediate
recourse; and I urge all readers to use it. We must pressure
our Senators to keep them from passing the Energy Bill. For
your convenience, Robert Redford's letter — which includes
two links to the
place where you are helped to send a message to your Senator —
is
reproduced at the bottom of this page. Please read down and
follow either link to make your voice known to our Senators that you
will not continue to support their increasing devastation of our
planet! (Or CLICK HERE to go
immediately to a link and skip over the intervening text.)
Of course the long-term solution is to reduce our dependence
on oil. But we will never achieve that as long as we have the
Texas Oil Cartel with its Cowboy Administration running our
country. As Ralph Nader has been pointing out, we have elected
a corporation to the presidency. And it is primarily an
oil corporation.
However, Robert Redford in his letter below, as
well as John Kerry (see John
Kerry's Plan), point out the many ways that alternative energies
can be utilized to achieve this freedom from dependence on foreign
oil. But before anything will
seriously be done in this direction, we will need a regime change in
Washington.
For not only will another Bush Administration virtually insure
the environmental apocalypse which, prominent scientists are
currently estimating, we have only a 50% chance of avoiding under
the best of circumstances; economists have estimated that the
exploding National Debt — "miraculously" brought back to
life by the Bush Administration after a seeming knockout punch by
the Clinton Administration only a few years earlier — will leave our grandchildren,
when it is their turn, only
10% of the total Budget for "discretionary" spending —
i.e., for spending for other than the interest on the debt.
What this all means is that unless we, RIGHT NOW!, manage to get
over our fascination with putting "C" students in charge
of the most important decisions in the World; unless we change the
economics of Robin-Hood-in-reverse, which has characterized our tax
system — with only eight glorious years of relief during the Clinton
era — since 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office and instituted
"voodoo economics; then — if we are alive to say it, if, that
is, the environmental apocalypse does not take us with it, we will have
the obligation and duty to tell those who had no say in it —
because they were too young or not even alive at the time — why we did
nothing when we could have, to prevent the environmental and
economic quagmire, if not outright hell, that our decisions or lack
of them now will have created for them.
Our course, then, couldn't be clearer. To keep us from being in crisis mode forever, with the
specter of global warming and other environmental calamities on the
horizon, which this administration ignores, encourages, or outright laughs about
(recall Republicans on the floor of Congress reading aloud passages
from Al Gore's important book on the environmental crisis — Earth
in the Balance — for the purpose of ridiculing Gore during the
presidential election of 2000), we must elect Democrat John Kerry
this year (see www.JohnKerry.com).
Unless and until we have a Democrat in the White House, we cannot go
back to business as usual. We simply cannot, if we do not want to have to
apologize to our grandchildren, twenty years from now, for standing by
while they were being saddled with a
National Debt so large as to prevent the possibility of their being
allowed social security, health insurance, or anything other
than paying off the interest on it; and let's not forget having to
ask their forgiveness for looking the other way while the Earth was
slowly but irreversibly being destroyed.
To help elect John Kerry
President:
Go to www.JohnKerry.com
Meanwhile, please
follow either of the links below in Robert Redford's letter of appeal regarding the
Energy Bill, reproduced as follows:
From the desk of Mister Robert Redford:
Over the next few weeks, President Bush and his congressional allies will
try once again to ram their disastrous energy bill through the
U.S.
Senate.
They fell only two votes
short in November and they've vowed to make passage of the
bill their top priority now that Congress has returned from
recess.
This bill may be the worst piece of legislation you and I will see in our
lifetimes.
It would pick your pocket, despoil your natural heritage, endanger
your family's health and smother your hope for a more secure
energy future.
We ignore this bill at our own peril.
Let me tell you our simple plan for thwarting this shameless attack on our
environment and pocketbooks.
If millions of Americans each took one minute to protest this bill, it would
cause every senator who is tempted to vote for it to think twice about doing
so.
You can make this happen within the next few hours by doing two things:
First, go to
http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0041
and send your two senators an email or fax, telling them to vote against
this pro-polluter energy bill.
Then, forward this message as an email to at least four of your friends,
family members or colleagues.
I am emailing this message to 550,000 NRDC Members and activists.
If each one forwards this message to just four more people,
we will generate a national tidal wave of opposition before this day is over.
And that won't be a moment too soon.
This disgraceful bill would pick our pockets to hand out billions of dollars
in taxpayer subsidies to the oil, coal and nuclear industries. That's their
long-awaited reward for making big-time contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
They profit while the rest of us pay the price -- in tax dollars and environmental
degradation.
This bill gives the energy giants a free pass to drill their way through
our last wild places, burn more dirty coal, build a new generation of risky
nuclear power plants and dramatically increase air pollution that would sicken
the vulnerable -- especially children and seniors -- for decades to come.
It would establish oil and gas development as the dominant use of our federal
public lands, open national parks to the construction of electricity transmission
lines, exempt polluters from core provisions of our clean air and water laws
and waive liability for the producers of the toxic gasoline additive MTBE
-- even though it has contaminated at least 1,500 public water supplies in
all 50 American states.
You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more backward-looking, wasteful and
self-defeating energy "plan" than this one.
At a time when the federal deficit is soaring and we're going
to war in the
Persian Gulf
oilfields, the White House wants to stick us with the tab for prolonging
our destructive dependence on fossil fuels, foreign oil and dangerous nuclear
technology.
This is not a national energy policy.
This is corporate welfare, pure and simple. Estimates of the bill's corporate
tax breaks range from $23 billion to well over $100 billion with loan guarantees
included. No surprise there.
Big energy companies cooked up this raid on the federal treasury during hundreds
of secret meetings with Vice President Cheney's energy task force and their
allies on Capitol Hill.
It's one thing to gouge taxpayers.
But to claim this rip-off is in the national interest, as the White House
would have us believe, is a slap in the face to every working American.
Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of voters -- of both parties
-- understand that we simply must reduce our out-of-control appetite for
fossil fuels if we ever are to secure energy independence.
That means turning American rooftops into the
Persian Gulf
of solar energy. It means producing
cars that get 40 miles per gallon. It means constructing efficient buildings
that use half the energy of the average American office without sacrificing
comfort.
Making this transformation to a super-efficient, low-pollution economy would
save consumers upwards of a trillion dollars, spare our last wild places
from destruction, improve our health, slow global warming and reduce our dependence
on undemocratic regimes overseas.
It's a no-brainer to anyone living outside the White House.
But unless millions of Americans speak out right now, the enactment of the
president's energy bill will doom us to an apocalyptic future of blighted
wilderness, poisonous air pollution, devastating climate change and endless
wars over fossil fuels.
Please make your voice heard. Go to
http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR041
and tell your senators to obey the will of the American people, not
the dictates of giant energy corporations!
Call on Congress to create a sustainable and affordable energy
path.
And please be sure to forward this message to at least four other people.
Believe me, millions
of Americans are just waiting for a simple way to stop this madness and lend
their support to a sane and hopeful energy future.
Sincerely yours,
Robert Redford
Board of Trustees
Natural Resources Defense Council
Note: If you have any questions
about this message, please write to us at
membership@nrdc.orgAfter
Related Article: Go to "
Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution: Psychological Roots
of Human Violence and Greed
" by Stanislav Grof, M.D.
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on:
mickel@primalspirit.com
Mickel Adzema
