Energy Bill To Increase U.S. Oil Dependency, Damage Environment And Threaten Public Health

(19 November 2003 — Washington) Environmental Defense today urged the U.S. Senate to defeat the pending energy bill, calling it a roadmap to environmental destruction without any real benefits to solving America’s oil dependency.

“The bill reads less like an energy independence policy and more like a copy of ‘How to Ruin the Environment for Dummies,’” said Environmental Defense spokesperson Steve Cochran. “It could be the single most aggressive assault on the environment in the last 30 years.  No member of Congress can credibly claim to care about the environment and vote for this bill.”

The bill increases America’s dependency on fossil fuels, ignores America’s impact on global warming, lets polluters off the hook, threatens our natural resources and will turn back the clock on decades of progress under the Clean Air Act.

“There are so many bad things in this bill it’s almost impossible to count them all,” said Cochran. “It should not become law.”

The bill:

• provides retroactive liability waivers to MTBE producers, providing a get-out-of-jail-free card to companies that may have contaminated water supplies;
• includes massive subsidies for fossil fuel-based energy, perpetuating America’s title as the world’s global warming pollution champion;

• completely ignores the impact of America’s energy policy on climate change, even after the Climate Stewardship Act nearly passed the Senate in October;

• will spur significant new oil and gas development in the Rockies, threatening sensitive habitat and worsening that region’s growing air and water quality crisis;

• includes no standard for renewable energy, despite President Bush’s positive renewable energy record as Texas Governor;

• virtually ignores fuel economy and consumption concerns, though high energy demand has created the current energy “crisis” and despite known and affordable solutions to curb consumption;

• postpones clean air deadlines for cities with “severe” air quality and will halt existing efforts to clean the air in some of America’s most threatened cities;

• assigns unilateral permitting and regulatory authority to the Secretary of Interior for all energy-related industrial facilities within the 200-mile U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, weakens states rights under the Coastal Zone Management Act and includes incentives for new offshore drilling in Alaska; and

• exempts land used for oil and gas exploration and development from Clean Water Act protection.