Bush Makes Renewed Push for Strategy on Energy
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: March 10, 2005
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Excerpt: "The driving force behind a national energy policy in the White House has been Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed the panel that initially set the administration's course - and became the first source of arguments about the secrecy of the Bush White House."
See also: Connections between Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, 9/11 and Peak Oil “On the Table” , by Michael Ruppert:
fromthewilderness.com
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COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 9 - President Bush tried on Wednesday to reinvigorate his administration's energy strategy, promising to overcome the obstacles Democrats and environmental groups have mounted to drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and saying it was time to start building more nuclear power plants.
Mr. Bush's renewed push, during a one-day visit to the Battelle Memorial Institute here to view an array of new energy technologies, was a rare departure from his almost daily lobbying for his No. 1 domestic priority: remaking the Social Security system. But his energy and environmental initiatives have suffered several setbacks in Congress, including the defeat on Wednesday by a Senate committee of Mr. Bush's antipollution legislation, which critics argued did not go far enough.
The White House said Wednesday afternoon that it planned to announce regulations on Thursday that would effectively put part of the defeated legislation into place. And Senate Republicans are moving this week to maneuver a vote on drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, that would not be subject to a Democratic filibuster.
"We could recover move than $10 billion of oil from a small corner of ANWR that was reserved specifically for energy development," Mr. Bush said to applause. "That's the same amount of new oil we could get from 41 states combined."
Many of those 41 states, officials later acknowledged, have no known oil reserves.
Mr. Bush argued that the drilling operation would involve 2,000 acres of the vast refuge, or "the size of the Columbus airport." He said the project would have "almost no impact on land or local wildlife," a point that environmental groups sharply dispute. The president was introduced by Samuel W. Bodman, the new secretary of energy, who toured the Alaska refuge last weekend with some Senate Republicans and Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton.
Mr. Bush's visit to Battelle, whose work includes new energy technologies and top-secret Defense Department contracts on ways to defend against germ weapons, was intended to demonstrate his commitment to energy conservation. In the past, the president has taken prototypes of hydrogen-powered cars onto the South Lawn of the White House, and he mentioned the promise of that technology again at Battelle. He said he saw technology "so that we can build the world's first coal-fueled zero-emission power plant," and he pointed to federally financed efforts to convert coal into a clean-burning gas.
Politically, White House aides say, such visits help defend Mr. Bush against accusations that his administration is more interested in drilling than conserving. Mr. Bush argued anew on Wednesday that he needed to do both, though many of his administration's plans to exploit new sources of energy are immediate and the new conservation technologies will take years. He also talked about producing ethanol and biodiesel fuels, subjects that usually get the most attention during primaries in the Midwest.
Mr. Bush rarely discussed nuclear power in last year's campaign, but he noted on Wednesday that "America hasn't ordered a nuclear power plant since the 1970's, and it's time to start building again."
He has several proposals under way, supported by the nuclear industry, to encourage new plants, and the administration is supporting an International Themonuclear Experimental Reactor that has become a source of competition between France and Japan, both of which want to be the site of the multi-billion-dollar project.
The driving force behind a national energy policy in the White House has been Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed the panel that initially set the administration's course - and became the first source of arguments about the secrecy of the Bush White House. There is still some mystery about industry's role in developing the proposals Mr. Cheney's group endorsed. But there has been little mystery about the direction the administration wants to head.
Mr. Bush tried during his visit to Ohio to draw on the main arguments he employs in selling a consistent tax policy to promote his energy plan. Companies and financial markets, he said, would be reluctant to invest if they feared that energy supplies could run short.
"All these uncertainties about energy supply are a drag on our economy," he said. "It is difficult for entrepreneurs to risk capital when they cannot predict the size of next month's energy bill."
Referring to the blackout in the summer of 2003, Mr. Bush added, "It's hard to plan with confidence if you're not sure the lights are going to stay on."
nytimes.com |
