Chicanery in the Senate
A conservation-minded American would have to be hiding in a cave not to know about the Senate’s 51-49 vote to assume 2006 revenues of $2.5 billion from selling oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(One should never debase that amazing place by calling it “Anwar,” which sounds like some already-trashed spot in the Middle East.)
Drilling advocates waxed euphoric during Senate debate about the need to make America independent of foreign oil... despite the fact that a March ‘04 Energy Department study estimated that even with Arctic Refuge oil, U.S. consumption of foreign oil would increase from 58 percent today, to 66 percent by 2025... and despite the fact that a White House aide recently said the oil companies had so little interest that “they wouldn’t accept ANWR leases if we gave them away.”
Over the last few years, efforts to open the Arctic Refuge to drilling have repeatedly failed. Public opposition is just too great. Even today, with gas prices shooting through the roof due to rising consumption here and increased global demand, a Gallup poll conducted a week before the Senate vote showed a significant majority of Americans still oppose drilling and that among Republicans who feel strongly about the issue, 50 percent oppose drilling. Clearly, there is no national mandate for such an action.
Had the vote been held under traditional Senate rules, there would not have been enough ayes to pass this ill- conceived scheme. So—still refusing to push fuel efficiency standards in one of the most wasteful nations on Earth, and with a whole year to go before the 2006 elections make this kind of legislative chicanery risky—Senate leaders decided to stick the drilling proposal into a budget bill that could not be filibustered and needed only the thinnest of majority votes to pass.
REP has written to thank these seven Republican senators who voted to keep drilling assumptions out of the ‘06 federal budget:
Lincoln Chafee (RI)
Norman Coleman (MN)
Susan Collins (ME)
Mike DeWine (OH)
John McCain (AZ)
Gordon Smith (OR)
Olympia Snowe (ME)
We urge our members (and others) to thank them, too. You can find their contact information in the new REP Action Center on our web site.
We also want to express our thanks to Congressman Jim Nussle (R, IA), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, who insisted that revenue assumptions from Refuge drilling not be included in the House budget bill.
The issue now goes to conference committee, where House and Senate conferees will have to reconcile the differences between their budget bills.
REP, as an active partner with the rest of the conservation community, will continue its efforts to keep drilling assumptions out of the final budget bill that goes to President Bush for signature.
What Was He Thinking?
One of the intriguing side stories that emerged after the Senate’s vote on the Arctic Refuge came in a press release put out that day by the office of Senator Mel Martinez (R, FL) about a deal he struck in exchange for his vote to drill in the Refuge, which read, in part:
“U.S. Senator Mel Martinez today announced he secured an agreement from the Administration to extend the current moratorium on offshore drilling off Florida’s Gulf Coast ‘Before I made my final decision on Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), I wanted to be confident that my vote would strengthen—not weaken—Florida’s moratorium on offshore drilling... I have worked closely with the Administration to secure its explicit assurance that the current moratorium on Florida’s Gulf Coast will be extended for an additional five years through 2012.’”
That claim sounded pretty shrewd until the next day, when somebody leaked a letter that Interior Secretary Gale Norton had sent Martinez a few days before the vote. Norton’s letter shows that he got nothing in return for his vote to drill the Arctic Refuge. The moratorium until 2012, which Martinez boasted of securing, already existed.
Wrote Norton: “The Administration will continue to support the existing Congressional moratoria and the Presidential withdrawals that prohibit offshore energy development near the Florida coast through 2012.” (REP America has a PDF copy of Norton’s letter, if anyone wants to see it.)
The real kicker came to light when one of the Senate’s most ardent drilling advocates, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), boasted to the Alaska media that she, not Martinez, had arranged this charade with Secretary Norton to provide Martinez the phony political cover needed to secure his vote.
Florida’s newspapers have responded to their new senator’s wheeling and dealing with a near-unanimous blast of bad feedback. (See quotes in blue, below, for a sample.)
“Did freshman Florida Senator Mel Martinez give his vote for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in return for the mere affirmation of an administration concession made years ago? Apparently so.” Lakeland Ledger
“Either Martinez was fooled into thinking he was getting something that he wasn’t, or he’s trying to fool Florida voters.” Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“Whether off the coast of Florida or in a pristine wildlife refuge in Alaska, the United States does not have to plunder and endanger ecologically sensitive areas to cut its dependence on foreign oil.” Orlando Sentinel
“What he’s actually done is put the outer continental shelf of Florida’s Gulf coast—and other environmentally sensitive areas oil companies are eager to explore—more at risk.” Florida Today
“When the first oil rig is erected in the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s coast, it should bear this plaque: ‘Thanks, Mel.’ ... Cast in the best light, Martinez sold out Alaska’s natural heritage to save ours. But the details of the deal reveal it accomplishes nothing and may actually weaken the effort to protect Florida’s coast. Some deal.” St. Petersburg Times
“Environmentally, one of the world’s last remaining unspoiled natural expanses will be turned over to soot, smog, clatter, traffic and pipelines as at nearby Prudhoe Bay. Economically, the newly flowing oil will have as much as a methadone effect on the consumptive habits of the Lower Forty-eights. It will enable further addiction to oil while lengthening the illusion of healthy energy habits.” Daytona Beach News-Journal
Truth-In-Advertising
Connecticut Representative Nancy Johnson—a dues-paying REP member and a member of our Honorary Board—has shown once again why she’s also one of our true heroes.
Johnson is the lead sponsor of the Fuel Efficiency Truth-in-Advertising Act of 2005 (HR 1130), introduced in March with bipartisan co-sponsorship including Republicans Sherwood Boehlert (NY), Mike Castle (DE), Vern Ehlers (MI), Phil English (PA), Mark Foley (FL), Wayne Gilchrest (MD), and Chris Shays (CT).
If passed into law, Johnson’s bill would remedy the situation facing car buyers who try to base their decisions on fuel efficiency.
Current (meaning 1970s-vintage) EPA fuel-efficiency testing procedures are known to result in inaccurate gas mileage rates that can exaggerate fuel efficiency by as much as 20 percent. Johnson’s bill would order EPA to update its testing procedures with realistic assumptions about modern driving habits, traffic conditions and vehicle technologies.
If the legislation passes, EPA testing procedures will have to take into account higher speed limits, faster acceleration rates, variations in temperature, use of air conditioning and other fuel-depleting features. In short, it will make sure consumers are actually getting the fuel efficiency they believe they are purchasing.
Clear Skies' Prospects Cloudy
The administration’s so-called “Clear Skies” legislation appears to be dying a slow and unlamented death.
Having gotten no traction for its wimpy bill in Congress, the administration has now turned to the EPA to accomplish by regulation what it was not able to accomplish by legislation.
The EPA’s regulatory process will be vulnerable to lawsuits, so nobody knows right now how this will settle out. There’s some good in the new regulations, but not nearly as much as could have been. And a better bill would likely have gotten Congress’ support.
Mucking Around with Mercury
Another hot-potato issue that the Bush administration has been tossing about is mercury.
A toxic metal produced by power plants—which collectively emit 48 tons of the stuff every year—mercury ends up in the food chain and is found in especially potent concentrations in fish. It is known to cause brain damage to unborn children, so pregnant women are now routinely advised to limit their consumption of tuna and other popular fish.
Mercury is also suspected of causing heart attacks in adults.
A flap has arisen over the EPA’s decision, announced in mid-March, to regulate the amount of mercury that can be released by American power plants, and also by their cap-and-trade approach to doing it.
Cap-and-trade has worked well with sulfur dioxide emissions. Companies that reduce the SO2 they produce can sell “credits” for the amount they don’t use to companies that are not able or willing to operate as cleanly. Gradually, the number of available credits is reduced, reducing SO2 pollution. With SO2 largely a regional pollutant, this approach has worked fine.
The problem with applying the cap-and-trade approach to mercury is that it falls into local waterways, lingering for decades or longer and creating “hot spots” of high-intensity mercury toxicity around power plants that have not decreased their mercury production. People living near those areas are likely to suffer much greater effects of mercury poisoning than people who live near cleaner plants.
That element of the administration’s preferred approach has long been known. What wasn’t known until just this spring was that the EPA’s plan would be far less effective in reducing public health risks than a previous proposal that the administration rejected. Now the full story has come out—from an EPA staffer who had to speak off the record for fear of losing his job.
Here’s what we now know.
Last year, EPA funded a Harvard University study of the health benefits of removing mercury from power plant emissions. An EPA scientist wrote the follow-up report, and two other EPA scientists officially agreed with its conclusions. Then they were all overruled.
The Harvard-EPA study showed that forcing a thorough, across-the-board clean-up of mercury released from America’s power plants would provide 100 times more health benefits than the cap-and-trade proposal released by the EPA.
These “100-times better” findings were certified in that EPA-funded, -written and -reviewed study, yet they were removed from documents made public at the time the EPA’s final rule was being released.
The EPA now claims that higher regulatory standards would result in health savings of “merely” $50 million every year, while the power industry would have to put out about three-quarters of a billion dollars to make that happen. In other words, they claim the costs to industry would be far greater than the benefits to the American people.
Problem is... those numbers don’t square with the Harvard study that EPA paid for. According to the study, if we set higher standards to keep mercury out of our waterways, we could save about $5 billion a year through reduced neurological and cardiac damage to humans. Your EPA chose to not to let the American people know about this key fact.**
Saving our Fisheries
REP has been working to secure Republican co-sponsors for the Fisheries Science and Management Enhancement Act of 2005 (HR 1431). This legislation would implement a number of recommendations made by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, which was appointed by President Bush. The Commission concluded: “Our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes are in trouble and major changes are urgently needed in the way we manage them.”
We’re proud to point out that two REP members, Honorary Board Member William Ruckelshaus (the first EPA administrator) and Dr. Frank Muller-Karger (who was just elected to the Executive Committee of REP’s Florida Chapter), served on that important commission.
HR 1431 will modify requirements for the appointment and training of members of Regional Fishery Management Councils, and will require that the Councils adhere to the catch limits recommended by their Science and Statistical Committees—which are composed of qualified federal, state, academic or independent scientists.
Because of the political difficulty and potential near-term economic consequences of reducing quotas, some Councils routinely ignore or delay the conservation recommendations of their Science and Statistical Committees, choosing instead to set unsustainable catch levels which are contrary to scientific recommendations.
This bi-partisan legislation, co-sponsored thus far by Republicans Joel Hefley (CO), Jim Leach (IA), and Christopher Shays (CT), will significantly improve job security for family fishermen by protecting the fish populations they depend on. Recent studies have found that fishermen today are pursuing fish populations that are only a tiny fraction in size of what fishermen found generations ago.
