Make Energy, Not War

Tax cuts for the rich, fuzzy-science missile defense, environmental standard rollbacks, assaults on workplace safety, a revival of nuclear power, eliminating salmonella testing of meat used for school lunches (an initiative that had to be quickly rescinded) -- it's a bad 1980s flashback, Ronald Reagan all over again. What's next: ketchup as a vegetable? Forget Dick Cheney -- is Nancy Reagan calling the shots? Is Miami Vice back on the air?

The two-CEOs-for-the-price-of-one, Bush/Cheney co-presidency produced a pair of major policy blunders recently, when the number-one guy delivered a speech on national missile defense, and the number-one-and-a-half guy made remarks about the administration's energy policy.

Trying to be bold, Bush proclaimed the age of nuclear deterrence dead and vowed to plow ahead with the construction and deployment of an anti-missile system that can shoot down a limited number of nuclear missiles heading toward the United States and its allies.

Claiming to be practical, Cheney said the nation had no choice but to drill for oil in Alaska, build new nuclear plants and emphasize production (more coal, more oil, more natural gas) over conservation and renewable energy sources.

It was easy to debunk each address.

Bush is selling a pig in a poke by pushing a product that has not been proven to work. (In fact, tests keep showing it's a dud.) A NMD system is not even desired by those Bush claims it will serve, for most US allies have noted they do not believe there is much of a threat of rogue-state missiles. After all, a rogue-state leader determined to nuke a US city -- and bring upon his own land annihilation -- could evade a missile shield by Fedexing a bomb. Constructing a defense system that many physicists maintain cannot work sufficiently could well encourage China (which now maintains about 20 nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States) to beef up its nuclear arsenal. And though Bush has refused to discuss the cost of his pie-in-the-sky project, estimates range from a budget-busting $60 billion to a really budget-busting $200 billion.

As for Cheney's energy comments, they reeked of disingenuousness. He declared nuclear power "the cleanest method of power generation we know," because it produces no greenhouse gasses. But what about all that nuclear waste that remains deadly for tens of thousands of years? In interviews, he has skated past any substantial discussion of what to do with all this radioactive poison.

Cheney, who ran the oil-services company Halliburton, also repeated the misleading factoid that drilling in the Alaska wilderness would occur only on 2000 acres -- "one-fifth the size of Dulles airport." He did not say these acres are not contiguous and are spread out across the most sensitive parts of the wilderness area, and that these patches would be linked together by over 100 miles of pipeline and drilling infrastructure.

Keeping with the Bush line that the nation is in the midst of an energy-supply crisis (as opposed to an excessive-use crisis), Cheney asserted that fossil fuels would have to be the primary energy resources for "years down the road" and that "conservation...is not a sufficient basis -- all by itself -- for a sound, comprehensive policy." But no conservation advocates claim that conservation all by itself is the only answer, and Cheney failed to mention that one reason why fossil fuels will remain the centerpiece of US energy policy "for years" is because the Bush administration is slashing research and development for alternative energy technologies and energy efficiency.

Days after Cheney's speech -- which drew much criticism from conservation and renewable energy advocates -- the White House leaked word that the forthcoming report of its energy task force would be more supportive of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies than speech. Still, the Bush budget shortchanged these areas.