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Energy efficiency, aid to poor suffer in priority shuffle
Richard Simon, LA Times
Under a 2005 energy bill signed by President Bush, an array of programs was promised more money.
But when Bush unveiled his new budget Monday, some of these programs — including energy assistance for low-income families and energy efficiency — lost out.
The promises of more federal dollars clashed with fiscal reality as a deficit-minded Bush sent his first budget to a Democratic-controlled Congress. The president’s spending proposals are certain to provoke fights as energy policy moves back to prominence on Capitol Hill amid heightened concerns about global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Bill Prindle, acting executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, said Monday that the president’s budget “sacrifices important efficiency programs.”
“Efficiency is the first fuel in the race for energy security,” Prindle said, urging Congress to scrap the president’s proposals. “If we don’t get our energy demand under control, none of the president’s or anyone else’s clean-energy proposals will be able to catch up.”
(6 Feb 2007)
Green America
Waking up and catching up
The Economist
…But whatever the fate of these proposals, the political climate is changing faster than the weather. Almost all the leading presidential candidates favour emissions caps. One of them, Hillary Clinton, has condemned the Bush administration’s failure to act as “unAmerican”. That is a remarkable change since 2000, when Al Gore toned down his environmental rhetoric during his presidential campaign for fear of sounding pious and obsessive. Indeed, activists are so convinced that the next president will be greener than Mr Bush that they are debating whether to settle for immediate but modest measures on global warming, or wait for a new administration to take bolder steps.
The Democrats have always been the greener party, but environmentalism is budding among Republicans too. Take Saxby Chambliss, a moderate senator. He voted against the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2005, but changed his mind after visiting Greenland to view the melting ice cap. “There really is something to it,” he now says.
…Despite all this grassroots environmentalism, America remains the biggest contributor to global warming, accounting for roughly a fifth of all the world’s emissions. The federal government’s recalcitrance on the subject remains the biggest obstacle to an effective global scheme to tackle the problem. But whereas in Europe or Asia new ideas often flow from the centre to the regions, in America the states are the incubators of big shifts in policy. This means that change is coming—fast.
(25 Jan 2007)
CEOs, Retired Generals Push to Curb Oil Reliance
Marianne Lavelle, US News & World Report
An influential private group of corporate chief executives and retired generals is telling lawmakers on Capitol Hill to “think big” on energy.
The Energy Security Leadership Council scheduled detailed discussions with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and other congressional leaders on their package of recommendations for a “grand compromise” to curb the nation’s oil addiction. Some Hill staffers have said privately that there is some sentiment against trying a big energy bill this session, since such legislation typically gets bogged down in controversy. Many Democrats think they will be more effective trying smaller, more targeted bills that are assured of passage.
But the group of ex-military leaders and corporate officials, many of them running businesses highly sensitive to energy prices, became convinced that progress on all fronts at once – supply, demand, and environmental-was needed, with inevitable trade-offs.
(30 Jan 2007)
