The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Democratic Party

Monday March 31, 2003

The Natural Resources Defense Council recently released a paper criticizing President Bush’s New Source Review reforms, calling them “the most dramatic rollback of our clean air laws since Congress enacted them more than 30 years ago.” The reforms, which were finalized on December 31, 2002, followed similar changes proposed in 1996 by Bill Clinton’s EPA. In 2001, Bob Perciasepe, Clinton’s assistant administrator for EPA’s Office Air and Radiation, called on the Bush Administration to consider finalizing the changes it proposed.

FACT: NRDC once again has shown its partisan colors. As Inside EPA reported on January 25, 2002: “In 2000, [NRDC’s David] Hawkins and other environmentalists were unwilling to level serious criticism against the Clinton administration for the reforms it was considering. Although activists registered their concerns with EPA, there was little in the way of the public attacks that have marked environmentalists' approach to the Bush administration's possible reforms.”

Senator Kerry and Renewable Energy

Friday March 28, 2003

In a speech delivered in February, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) set a bold goal for using renewable energy. “I believe we should set a national goal of having 20% of our electricity come from domestic alternative and renewable sources by the year 2020,” he said. “Twenty-twenty - I think it's a vision worthy of America; a goal I believe our citizens are ready to embrace.” Similarly, the Sierra Club said in 2001 that “with today’s technology, wind energy alone could economically provide 20 percent of America’s electricity.”

 

FACT: Renewables do have a role in reducing energy independence, but a very limited one. As the Energy Information Administration warned, “Projections of large increases in renewable energy use should be viewed with caution.” According to an EIA forecast, non-hydro renewables will make up just 3 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020. Even under scenarios that assume rapid improvements in renewable technologies with correspondingly lower costs to consumers, EIA reports that renewables will comprise a whopping 4.6 percent of the electricity mix.

 

McCain-Lieberman

Wednesday March 26, 2003

Fred Krupp, executive director of Environmental Defense, testified during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in January that the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, cosponsored by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, “would deliver the single most crucial response to the dangers of climate change -- actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions below current levels.”

FACT: The McCain-Lieberman bill, which requires four major sectors of the economy to reduce their CO2 emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 and 1990 levels by 2016, would effectively implement the Kyoto Protocol. So the question is: what would Kyoto do to remedy the supposed problem of global warming? According to Tom Wigley, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, not much at all. The Kyoto Protocol would reduce global temperatures by a mere 0.07°C by the year 2050. That figure is so small that it cannot be measured reliably by ground-based thermometers. Thus McCain-Lieberman would have virtually no effect on global temperatures. Instead, like Kyoto, it would wreak havoc on the nation’s economy.

 

Clean Power Act and Natural Gas

Tuesday March 25, 2003

Earlier this year, the wholesale price of natural gas was over $6.00, more than three times the average price from 1991 to 1998. By February, spot prices reached record levels, above $12.00. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, high natural gas prices were a significant contributing factor to the manufacturing recession. The National Energy Policy Report found that high natural gas prices could be a “continuing problem” if gas supplies are inadequate to meet growing demand.

 

FACT: The Energy Information Administration found that the Clean Power Act, a leading Democratic proposal to reduce power plant emissions, would cause rapid fuel switching from coal to natural gas, increasing natural gas-based electricity generation by 60 percent. EIA warned that under the Clean Power Act “it is far from certain that the power sector would be able to move from dependence mostly on coal to dependence on natural gas and renewables in a relatively short time period without encountering supply problems.”

 

Democrats give with one hand, and take with the other.

Wednesday March 19, 2003

Democrats are considering introducing an amendment to the FY 2004 Budget resolution to increase funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). LIHEAP helps low-income families, principally located in Northeastern states, that can’t afford dramatic price increases for home heating oil and natural gas. Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee last year compared President Bush to the Grinch for “cutting” LIHEAP funding.

 

FACT: Democrats give with one hand, and take with the other. According to the Energy Information Administration, the Clean Power Act, which has 21 Democratic cosponsors, would increase consumer electricity prices by 32 percent by 2010. The bill’s cap and trade program for CO2 emissions is, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a regressive tax—“that is, it would impose a greater relative burden on low-income households than on higher income households.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in referring to President Clinton’s proposed energy tax increase, said it best on the Senate floor in 1993: “I do not believe that we are treating [the poor and the elderly] fairly...."

 

Polar Bears and ANWR

Monday March 17, 2003

For today’s Fact, we excerpt from Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s excellent testimony on ANWR last week before the House Resources Committee:

 

“We often see pictures of polar bears in appeals for funds to save the Arctic Refuge. One organization begins its plea with a statement that development ‘could force polar bears to abandon their maternity dens, which they dig in the snowdrifts, and leave their cubs to die.’ This comes from a 1985 report of one polar bear leaving its den as a result of older seismic activity.”

FACT: “North Slope development, which is far more intense than any potential Coastal Plain development, has had no devastating effect on polar bears. Polar bears have thrived since 1967. The [National Academy of Sciences] report found there have been no known cases where polar bears have been affected by oil spilled as a result of North Slope industrial activities. NAS sums up its polar bear discussion by stating there is evidence to support a finding that there have been no serious effects or accumulation of effects on polar bears.”

 

Kyoto Protocol

Friday March 14, 2003

Supporters of the Kyoto Protocol and other domestic energy suppression measures argue that President Bush’s policies have violated the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. They claim that the U.S. is required, according to the Framework, to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the climate system.” “Such a level,” the Framework says, “should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adopt naturally to climate change."

 

FACT: President Bush believes science should dictate climate policy, not the other way around. Science has not determined what a “safe” level of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would be. Dr. Robert Watson, former chairman the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, went even further, saying the notion of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate was at heart “a political issue,” not a scientific one.

 

Millitary Encroachment

Thursday March 6, 2003

As the nation appears headed into war with Iraq, the estimable Philip Clapp of the National Environmental Trust recently denounced the Pentagon’s request to rationalize and reform enforcement of environmental laws on military training bases. Mr. Clapp confidently proclaimed that such reforms are “totally unnecessary.”

FACT: Where to begin? How about with the Navy, which under a court settlement must get a waiver from the Natural Resources Defense Council every time it tests low-frequency sonar in the Pacific (sonar is critical to detecting enemy submarines). Maybe Mr. Clapp is unaware of California’s Mojave Desert, where Marine commanders say soldiers are forced to train in the daytime because desert tortoises might be trampled at night (most of the fighting in Iraq, military planners say, will be done at night). He apparently is oblivious too of the 17-mile beach at Camp Pendleton, where Marines, because of environmental restrictions, can practice amphibious landings on just 200 yards of space.

 

Senator Kerry's "common sense" on global warming.

Wednesday March 5, 2003

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is one of 19 cosponsors of the Clean Power Act, a highly flawed bill that, among other things, forces the U.S. to unilaterally address “global warming” by capping its emissions of carbon dioxide. Developing countries such as China, already the world's second biggest emitter of CO2, and expected to emit more carbon dioxide than the current combined total of the United States, Japan and Canada by 2025, would not be part of the “solution” called for in the Clear Power Act.

FACT: Here’s Sen. Kerry’s earlier observation—made during the debate over the Kyoto Protocol in 1997—about how best to combat “global warming”: It’s just “common sense,” he said, “that if you are really going to do something to effect global climate change and you are going to do it in a fair-minded way…we need to have an agreement that does not leave enormous components of the world's contributors and future contributors of this problem out of the solution.”

 

Compassionate SUV Drivers

Wednesday March 5, 2003

In its “Quote of the Day,” the Sierra Club quotes Dr. Jeffrey Runge of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration speaking about the dangers SUVs pose to drivers and passengers of cars: "The theory that I'm going to protect myself and my family even if it costs other people's lives has been the operative incentive for the design of these vehicles, and that's just wrong. Not to sound like a politician, but that's not compassionate conservatism."

FACT: We quote from a Feb. 19 editorial in The Capital, a newspaper based in Annapolis, on SUVs and the recent DC-area snowstorm: “This thesis didn’t hold up in the last few days. Owners of SUVs mobilized to help countless people stranded in their homes. Many of these people—nurses, doctors, emergency workers—depended on volunteers behind the wheel of SUVs. Perhaps these drivers smugly enjoyed their superior mobility, but if it weren’t for them, we wonder how many SUV critics would still be stuck in their homes.”
« First < Prev Next > Last »

Related Links