Texan-led US government no cure for petro junkies

Clean economy, BY RACHEL ACKOFF | ORGANIC POLITICS

from Phoenix.swarthmore.edu

I would laugh when I hear the Bush Administration referred to as an oiligarchy if it didn’t make me want to cry. George W. Bush’s ties to the oil industry go all the way back to his grandfather — his family has been running oil companies since 1950. Dick Cheney spent the late 90s as CEO of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil services company. And Condoleezza Rice sat on the board of Chevron, which graced a tanker with her name. So it’s nothing but ironic that in his most recent State of the Union address, the oil-man-turned-President said, “Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil.”

Hold up — the worst environmental president in the history of the United States just cautioned us against oil addiction? This is the man who brought us the “Clear Skies Initiative,” a plan to allow three times more toxic mercury emissions, 50 percent more sulfur emissions and hundreds of thousands more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides by essentially gutting the Clean Air Act. This is the president who signed into law his so-called “Healthy Forests Initiative,” a proposal to speed up forest “thinning” projects in over 20 million acres of public lands, while undermining critical protections for endangered species. So I’m under no illusions that Bush’s seemingly pro-environment comment in the State of the Union will result in a serious move to limit our dependence on fossil fuels, increase our support of renewable energy and help solve global warming.

Since Bush isn’t going to show leadership on the clean energy front any time soon, who will? If the left knew what was good for it (big IF), it would. For far too long, most progressive groups have focused on a single issue area (gay rights, affirmative action, etc.), forwarding separate goals with tactical approaches that tend to be short-term and single impact. The right, in contrast, has promoted comprehensive plans in which a change in one carefully chosen area has dramatic and far-reaching effects in many, many other issue areas. Think tax cuts. By promoting tax cuts, the right is able to simultaneously choke off funds from all of the social programs it opposes. The left should get it together and realize that pursuing a clean energy future for America would be a comprehensive plan that would win.

The heart of the plan might be increasing alternative energy investment, but the effects would be far-ranging, span multiple issue areas, create new alliances and lead to a long-term, visionary solution: a clean energy economy. It would create millions of new, high-paying jobs, reinvigorating the American industrial sector, and the industrial unions. It would improve human health by reducing air pollution, alleviating health problems like childhood asthma and lung cancer. It would halt the environmental degradation associated with dependence on fossil fuels, resulting in cleaner air and water, protection of species, preservation of natural habitats and a fix for global warming. It would improve our foreign policy by ending our reliance on Middle Eastern oil.

We need to call on our elected officials to pursue such a far-reaching strategy to improve the quality of our lives and the health of our planet. But while they’re working on it, we shouldn’t sit back and wait for wind- and solar-powered nirvana. We should start to create the world we want to live in right now. And that’s exactly what Earthlust is doing. (Full disclosure — I am a member). The group has come up with a proposal for Swarthmore College to reduce its consumption of dirty energy by purchasing more of its energy from renewable sources and by pursuing large-scale energy conservation. We’re calling on the college to commit to purchasing 35 percent of its energy from renewable sources by the end of the school year (we’re currently purchasing only 8.5 percent, which is well below other elite small liberal arts colleges — Carleton purchases 40 percent and Oberlin purchases 60 percent). As an institution of higher education committed to the ideal of “ethical intelligence,” Swarthmore has a special obligation to be a responsible energy consumer. Furthermore, we’re not talking about a break-the-bank kind of expense here. If we purchase the renewable energy from the most affordable sources, the additional cost would total around $42,000, equivalent to approximately 3.18 percent of the College’s energy costs.

Swarthmore College can’t solve global warming all by its lonesome, but as part of a larger movement for a clean energy future, it can have a huge impact. Already, over 75 college campuses have purchased substantial amounts of clean energy and many others are pioneering new methods of energy-efficient design, green buildings and climate-responsible investment policies. If we subscribe to our professed belief in the power of ideas to change the world, then the path forward is clear.

Rachel is a junior. You can reach her at rackoff1@swarthmore.edu.