Energy Policy: Democrats have vision, Republicans mired in oil

Sometimes things just come together and several individual items that don't quite add up to a story unite into a really good one.

This last week, a discussion with someone who grew up in Iowa, this month's issue of Catalyst, the newsletter of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a press release from Nancy Pelosi all synergized to remind me that Democrats have been pushing for a real, American, practical energy policy since the Carter administration and all the Republicans advocate for are oil, oil, oil.

On October 26th, in response to the release of record profits by the bloated oil company Exxon/Mobil, Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement:

"Today’s record oil company profits remind Americans that Republicans’ energy policies, which were written in secret by the Cheney Task Force and the energy industry, are an abject failure for the American people. Their six-year record of heaping subsidies on oil companies reaping record profits while leaving consumers to pay the bill, has brought us record dependence on foreign oil.

“Under President Bush and the Republican Congress gas prices are 75 percent higher than in 2000, consumers will pay an average $2,300 more in energy costs than they did in 2000, and we are sending nearly $800 million a day to the Middle East and other oil producing countries.”

“Democrats’ New Direction will free America from our dangerous addiction to foreign oil – and we intend to do it within 10 years. Our energy plan ends these unnecessary giveaways to Big Oil and invests in clean, energy-efficient technologies, conservation, and promoting domestic energy alternatives, such as biofuels. Our plan will send our energy dollars to the Midwest, not the Middle East.”

We are footing the bill for record oil company profits. And, I would add, American soldiers are dying for those profits and yet our government won't even give them adequate body armor. This is the result of Bush's energy policy: Americans pay 75% more, oil companies make record profits, American soldiers die.

But what is the alternative Democrats recommend? Alternative energy. Clean energy. AMERICAN energy. That is the alternative.

Republicans want us to think oil and coal are the only option because those are the options they can profit off the most. But coal, if done cleanly, is more expensive than wind power, and oil is the old solution, dirty solution, the Saudi solution. Republicans are mired in the old ways, energy solutions for the 19th and 20th Centuries. Democrats have been looking at new solutions since the 1970's and Republicans keep shaking their heads and saying we are not able to make the shift.

But others are making the shift. I just heard Bill Clinton at a fundraiser talk about how those industrial nations who embrased the Kyoto accord on global warming as an opportunity to explore cleaner, domestically produced energy had more job growth and economic expansion than America, which still clings to the old, Republucan/Saudi energy policy. And I have written about NUMEROUS nations who are EMBRACING alternative energy as a major part of their energy policy, including Australia, Argentina, Brazil and Sweden. Is the United States so technologically backwards that we can't have as ambitious a vision as Brazil and Argentina? NO! It is REPUBLICANS who lack the visions. Democrats HAVE the vision. And we advocate for sound energy solutions that WORK for Americans.

At this last week's New Democratic Majority meeting, I met a gentleman who has just moved to NYC from Minnesota, but grew up in Iowa. He told me this about wind energy: for every wind generating unit an Iowa farmer puts up on his property, he loses a little less than an acre of usable land, but gains income that far outweighs what he can get from that acre in produce. Iowa farmers are making a profit by leasing their land for wind energy. And that wind energy gives a real energy alternative to Saudi oil. This is a PROGRESSIVE solution, backed by Democrats, which is a sound, AMERICAN alternative to the old, outdated, failed Republican oil policy. It helps farmers and it creates American jobs. I am also aware of a program where American Indians are starting to use wind energy as an income source, again benefiting AMERICANS while creating alternative energy.

This is not some future solution. In fact, we have had the capability of using wind as a major part of our energy policy for at least 10 years. According to a Sept. 1995 Scientific American article, America's Great Plains states could, using the technology existing AT THAT TIME, be a major energy exporter using wind power alone. That was 1995. Why are we still subsidizing oil profits and sacrificing our soldiers for oil?

According to the current issue of Catalyst, from the Union of Concerned Scientists (issue not yet online) today's wind generators are currently producing 10,000 megawatts of energy in America, enough to power more than 2.5 million homes. What has lagged is NOT technology, but investment. Many problems, such as bird kills, have been greatly reduced and efficiency greatly increased. Yet the primary cornerstone of energy policy under Bush is oil subsidies, which is the ONLY thing that allows oil to compete against the improved wind energy.

Jimmy Carter initiated the incentives for alternative energy, at a time when technology was still improving. Ronald Reagan largely halted those incentives. Real growth in wind energy investment only really happened near the end of Bill Clinton's administration, which is when larger scale investment began. Al Gore and John Kerry both made these kind of American, clean energy alternatives a major part of their proposed energy policies. Yet Bush, like Reagan before him, could not see beyond the old solutions, oil and coal. Nuclear was their only relatively new solution, but no one has yet been able to find a solution for the waste problem in that industry. Safety concerns have been addressed well from what I can tell, but there is still a problem with waste products that remain dangerous far longer than modern technology can reliably contain them.

Voting for Democrats supports new, American ideas for energy policies that help farmers, create American jobs, reduce pollution, reduce dependence on Saudi and Venezuelan oil and is cheaper than clean coal. Vote for new ideas, vote Democrat.

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