The Political Voices of Women

Skyrocketing Gas Prices. Bush Energy Big-Oil Policy. Solar Power, and Bio-Fuels. What Does Our Future Hold? — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at The Care2 Election Blog)

Today’s political blog roundup is looking at energy policy – how we got here, and where we might be going. Keep in mind, this is only a very small sampling of what is out there, if you don’t believe me, just Google energy policy and see for yourself. I’ve started off with an except from an Associated Press article. I hope you will share your thoughts, ideas, and frustrations on this issue in comments.

From The Associated Press…

The public should pressure President Bush and his Republican allies in Congress to change energy policies that have led to record gasoline prices and intense economic pressures on working people, veteran Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg said Saturday.

“It’s long past time to change our national priorities,” the New Jersey senator said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address. “We know there’s little hope that President Bush will suddenly wake up and see the light. But unfortunately, his Republican allies in Congress continue to stand by his side, with the oil and energy companies for the status quo and against the American people.”

Lautenberg said Democrats are attempting to change the nation’s approach to energy but face stiff resistance from Bush and his allies.

From Down With Tyranny…

One of the very first things Cheney did after he and Bush stole the election in 2000 was to assemble a still secret conclave of oil and gas industry executives and tell them that in return for underwriting GOP electoral efforts they could write the Bush Regime energy policies. Which is what they did and which is precisely why I spent $53.75 yesterday to fill up the same car that used to cost me $20-something dollars to fill up. On December 16, 2003 the L.A. Times wrote that “the Sierra Club, an environmental group, and Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest group, sued Cheney, contending that as head of the energy task force he had violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, which generally requires open meetings whenever outsiders offer advice to high government officials. During the litigation, Cheney refused to turn over documents detailing who met with his energy task force, and he has argued that the Constitution forbids private lawyers from asking for the information.”

. . .

Mitch McConnell is the living, breathing, lisping embodiment of Republican hypocrisy. The GOP has one proposal to high gas prices: more tax cuts and subsidies for robber baron oil companies. Nicole over at Crooks & Liars nailed House Republicans today for the same bad faith demonstrated by McConnell. She posted a great video of “Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) railing against the Republican special interests that prevent any real progress from being made on getting control over skyrocketing fuel prices and huge profits being realized by oil companies while consumers struggle with high fuel costs.” Watch:

This is from Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics…

We have spent 50 years doing exactly the wrong things when it comes to energy policy. In fact, an enemy could not have done worse. “We have met the enemy and he is us” is the motto of our country.

Here is a video on solar power I found at EcoScraps…

From RealClearMarkets…

The world economy is being battered by sharply higher energy prices. While a few energy-exporting countries in the Middle East and elsewhere reap huge profits, the rest of the world is suffering as the price of oil has topped $110 per barrel and that of coal has doubled.

Without plentiful and low-cost energy, every aspect of the global economy is threatened. For example, food prices are increasing alongside soaring oil prices, partly because of increased production costs, but also because farmland in the United States and elsewhere is being converted from food production to bio-fuel production.

From The Politicus…

Whether you believe in man-made global warming or not is becoming increasingly immaterial in the modern political landscape.
Most rational discussions have ended and the masses have staked their ground and are ardently defending their platforms.However, one of the few positive results from this discussion is the willingness to address the use of alternative energy sources.Proponents for a responsible energy policy have been advocating alternative fuels for quite some time.

Some advocate a more traditional approach to the world’s energy needs by relying on technological advances in harnessing wind, solar, geothermal and water sources to power the world, while others have jumped on the biofuel bandwagon.

One thing is certain though: America’s energy policy will be drastically different in the coming decades.
Are we on the right track though?

The answer is a resounding no. Biofuels will do far greater harm to the economy and the ecosystem than America’s ever-growing oil addiction could ever achieve.

This is from No Impact Man…

No one I know wants to throw a plastic cup away every time they drink a coffee. Or to toss a plastic bag. Or to feel like their living comfortably will cost the earth. Everybody I know feels bad about the way things are going. It’s not that they don’t want to change. It’s that they don’t know how to change, not least because much of what makes individual lifestyle unsustainable are the choices that the culture presents us (think, for example, of suburbs built for cars instead of villages interconnected by rail).

Our institutions and systems were all built on the assumption that the planet’s resources were limitless, which has been proved, of late, not to be true. What our culture is in the grip of is not bad character but bad systemic habits, some of which will be very hard to break. But that does not make us or our culture bad. It just makes us mistaken.

This is from The Scrap Bin…

What is on the Horizon? Check out the Habitat for Humanity project in Lenoir City, TN using structurally insulated panels; they spend only $0.50 per day. They use heat pumps to move air. Oakridge Labs is developing an integrated system and you can heat the home as well as the water to cut cost by 50%. Or go to an advanced insulation with a parafin that absorbs heat during the day and then as it cools it goes to a solid state and heats the house. We are now getting to plug-in hybrid vehicles where we can use excess capacity to power others.

This is from Capital Gains and Games…

It’s not often that a U.S. domestic policy change causes worldwide food riots, but that’s what our ethanol subsidies have done according to a World Bank analysis. On December 19, 2007, President Bush signed H.R.6 into law with a five-fold increase in the mandated use of ethanol in gasoline. That stood on top of another large ethanol mandate in another H.R.6, enacted on August 8, 2005. Corn prices have jumped from $2/bushel in 2005 to $4/bushel last year, and they’ve just crested $6/bushel. In 2005, 6% of U.S. corn production went to ethanol; now its up to 23%. Only now are we beginning to realize that we’re not achieving any overall energy efficiency with our heavy ethanol subsidies and mandates, we’re just helping U.S. corn growers and starving the world’s poor.

From Earth News…

Aubrey K. McClendon has one big problem in selling his message that natural gas is a fuel that will become available in great abundance within the United States and “that will continue to be a bargain.” It is that many of his peers in the gas production business and other industries that consume large volumes of gas don’t believe him.

The message, delivered in dozens of full-page ads in major newspapers and now running on television — all financed primarily by McClendon, the chairman and chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corp. — has roiled the industry like few issues have.