Bush gas high price responsible

When environmental leaders talk about the Bush Administration's team--Secretary of Interior Gale Norton, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Christine Todd Whitman and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham--the operative word is "scary."

About Norton, an extremist advocate of private property rights during a long public career, Endangered Species Coalition Executive Director Brock Evans says, "This is the scariest nomination for Secretary of Interior I have witnessed in 20 years. The implications for just about every place, every value, every resource protection that Americans have fought for over two decades are frightening." Mark Helm, a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, calls the new administration "a nightmare. By choosing people like Gale Norton, Bush is calling for a war on the environment."

Joan Mulhern, legislative counsel for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, is also aghast at the prospect of four years of Gale Norton at Interior. "Her appointment is very troubling," she says. "And we believe she will take extreme positions across the board against public lands and in favor of private property rights. There will be significant loss of protection."

Although these and many other environmental groups mounted determined campaigns against their nominations (Greenpeace even unfurled an anti-Norton banner at the Interior Department, leading to three arrests), all of Bush's environmental picks sailed through to confirmation. The combination of Norton, Abraham and Whitman in key positions is likely to mean that environmentalists will spend the next four years fighting a rear-guard action against regulatory rollbacks and struggling to gather congressional support against bad policies, including proposed oil drilling in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

BLOOD FOR OIL

The battle over ANWR drilling will be a key one, as it's obviously a top priority for the oil-friendly Bush Administration and the only environmental issue discussed during the Presidential debates. No less than four top Bush aides have close oil ties, as does the President himself, and they speak of opening up the 1.5-million-acre refuge with near-religious fervor. But environmentalists will not surrender "America's Serengeti" without an intense fight that will recall many similar encounters, such as the confrontation over unhindered logging in the days of Reagan-era Interior Secretary James Watt, and the environmental rollbacks that were part of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America."

"Clearly, destroying one of the most spectacular places on the planet is too high a price to pay for politics as usual," said the Sierra Club in a report last year. But that destruction has long been on the Republican agenda, and never more so than in the Bush Administration. Both Bush and Interior Secretary Norton have used California's electricity crisis as a justification for drilling in Alaska, even though the region's oil could not actually start flowing until 2007 and most electric plants in California are fueled by natural gas. During her confirmation hearings, Norton claimed that ANWR held "the largest energy reserves ever found in the United States," and that it could be extracted in what she called "an environmentally responsible way" by drilling only in "the dead of winter."

But Adam Kolton, Arctic campaign director of the Alaska Wilderness League, says that drilling in any season is extremely damaging to ANWR. "Winter seismic vehicle tracks from exploratory tests done 15 years ago are still visible," he says. "The arctic tundra has still not recovered."

Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski, a Republican who has led the fight for ANWR drilling, waves away such concerns. He says drilling poses no danger to the migratory birds, caribou, wolverines, musk oxen, polar and grizzly bears living in the refuge. But a look 60 miles to the west, to the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, proves otherwise. With its pipelines, roads, drilling pads, wells, waste pits and airstrips, the ruined tundra of the oil fields covers 800 square miles.

According to the Alaska Wilderness League, 95 percent of Alaska's Arctic Slope is already open for exploration. Contradicting Norton, the group says that little recoverable oil lies beneath the refuge's coastal plain. A 1987 report prepared for the drilling-friendly Reagan Administration projected an only one-in-five chance of discovering economically viable oil there. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, at best the Arctic Refuge contains 3.2 billion barrels of oil, which is only six month's supply at current consumption rates.

Melanie Griffin, the Sierra Club's director of land protection programs, suggests increasing investment in renewable energy and conservation technologies as an alternative to oil drilling. "But in this political climate," she says, "there's not a lot of support for that."

And why is that, you may ask? If we were less dependent on foreign oil, wouldn't we be less susceptible to economic damage from price increases? To understand why that argument falls on deaf ears in Congress, just follow the money. Senators voting to remove the Alaska oil ban in 1995 received 5.3 times more money from oil and gas political action committees than did senators who voted against lifting the ban, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Alaska's Murkowski was the Senate's leading recipient of energy and natural resource money in the 1997 to 1998 election cycle. Big oil and auto companies contributed $33.5 million overall to political candidates during that period. The oil industry alone gave $22 million, more than any other energy or natural resource sector, CRP reports. Of that total, 76 percent went to Republican candidates considered friendly to industry interests. Big oil was particularly generous to Alaskan Congressman Don Young, who was helped to victory with $119,708. Young is an outspoken critic of environmental initiatives.

Bush himself raised a huge percentage of his campaign cash from oil and gas interests, including a record $21.3 million at a single fundraiser hosted by Kenneth Lay, chief executive of Enron, the largest natural gas dealer in the U.S. The industry's allocations followed the pattern of the 1997 to 1998 election cycle, when 76 percent of the $22 million donated by oil interests went to Republican candidates.

Vice President Dick Cheney was plucked directly into the campaign from the helm of the Texas-based oil services giant Halliburton, Inc., which helped rebuild Iraq's petroleum industry after the Persian Gulf War. Cheney, who is likely to have considerable influence in the Bush Administration, is hostile toward energy conservation in general and tax subsidies for clean vehicles in particular. Speaking at a recreational vehicle plant in Washington State during the campaign, Cheney made points with the audience by declaring, "You have a solar panel on your house, you get tax relief. If you drive a solar-powered car, you get tax relief. It's goofy."

Bush himself is clueless on such matters. During a Los Angeles stop in the early days of the 2000 Presidential campaign, Bush listened to the complaints of a man who rode two slow buses to work every day and wanted transit improvements. "My hope is that you will be able to find good enough work, so you'll be able to afford a car," replied a helpful Bush.

The auto industry has a direct pipeline to the Bush Administration in the person of Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card, Jr. From 1993 to 1998, Card was the president of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, "where he oversaw the lobbying against tighter fuel-economy and air pollution regulations for automobiles," as The New York Times described it. From there, it was on to a vice presidency at General Motors.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former Chevron board member, has an oil tanker named after her. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, defeated last November as U.S. Senator from Michigan, twice co-sponsored bills calling for drilling in the Arctic Refuge. He consistently opposed raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for the auto industry, voted against $62 million for solar and other renewables in the Energy Department budget and, of course, also tried to abolish the Energy Department itself.

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) reported itself "stunned" by Abraham's appointment, since he was the group's number one target for defeat in 2000. In the Senate, Abraham's lifetime LCV environmental voting record was five percent. According to the group, he accepted more campaign contributions from polluting industries and interests than any other congressional candidate, more than $700,000.

GALE NORTON: POLLUTERS' MOST VALUABLE PLAYER