The first letter is from Mike D of the Beastie Boys. It was posted on their website, at www.grandroyal.com/action. Mike is spearheading a media campaign organizing efforts on the part of various musicians to oppose the Bush energy plan.

A letter from Mike D regarding the proposed Bush Energy Policy
please read and take action (http://www.saveourenvironment.org/action/item.asp?item=345)

Dear peoples, though I rarely do stuff like this, pestering the masses, this is a topic that is too vital, too central, and too important to our entire planet to ignore or to simply not do something about. Every once in a long while, one nation on our small planet attempts to take a selfish step that goes against the tide of history. That time is now, and that nation is us. I'm asking for your help to stop George W. Bush's energy plan. His plan will take us back in time to an era when we moved Native Americans from their lands in order to mine the minerals where they lived, a time when people thought that nuclear power was safe, a time when coal power plants turned America's skies black as the night.

Let me give you one example of how far this thing reaches. In the far northern regions of Alaska, the Gwich'in people have lived harmoniously with the land for the last 20,000 years. Their culture is based around the caribou. It's the source of their food, their ceremonial clothing, and their spirit. President Bush has proposed that we allow oil companies to drill for oil in the center of their lands, a place that America protected long ago called the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Gwich'in believe that the drilling will destroy their way of life by destroying the land on which they live.

95% of Alaska's coastal oil plane is already open for oil development. Even the oil industry says that there's only a six-month of supply of oil on the Gwich'ins land. The Sierra Club calculated that if automakers just made our cars 3 miles per gallon more efficient, we'd save the same amount of oil that we might find on the Gwich'ins land. Don't you think we would have learned by now that destroying the native land and people of America is wrong?

Then there's the part of the plan that suggests all of these new subsidies to nuclear power plants. Has everyone forgotten about Chernobyl? One new report that just came out says that 92% of US nuclear power plants have violated federal safety regulations since 1996. Bush wants the federal government to insure nuclear power plants, so that if they melt down, the corporations who build them won't be fully responsible. There's something really whacked about the logic there.

I could go on. Bush wants to build 1300 new coal power plants. Can you imagine what that will do to people with asthma? He also wants to allow oil companies to drill for oil off of the coast of Florida and in the Rocky Mountains. Burning coal and oil contributes to global warming. Bush's plan is going to affect every being on the planet, causing permanent and irreversible damage.

So what's the alternative? First of all, we all would do well to remember that it's our use of energy that allows politicians to suggest that we give away the farm to oil companies. So this may in fact be the most difficult part to get across. But can we all just try to start taking a step in the right direction by refining our own actions, consumption, and attitudes? We could all learn to simplify our lives a little turn lights off, take a bus if you can, wear a sweater, share a ride, ride a bike etc....Each individual act may seem very small, but as a whole all such actions together are very strong and our only real means of achieving harmonious sustainable growth and living. I myself spend my time primarily in two very large cities, New York and Los Angeles. In New York, I try to ride my bike as often as makes sense (no shoulder jokes please) or take the subway. Sure at times, almost daily I will have to take a cab, but at least I am thinking about alternatives. In LA, the picture is a bit bleaker. I would gladly use the mass transit train system if it went anywhere I needed to go from the station near my home, but unfortunately it's not there yet. So wouldn't we better off spending our governments time and resources building a better mass transit infrastructure then on further exhausting our finite amounts of natural resources, spoiling our wilderness and the planets eco system along the way? If none of this is compelling enough, another reason to interject this kind of awareness into our lives is in order to serve as a bit of an example for others. Again, this may seem high handed. But on the real, how do we make others aware of these solutions? By practicing them ourselves. Straight up.

We also need the government to pursue alternative energy sources. The sunlight the Earth receives in 30 minutes is equivalent to all the power used by humankind in one year. Why isn't Bush excited about that? President Bush's budget actually cuts research in renewable energy programs by 37 percent and cuts energy efficiency research by 30 percent. Could this be because the Republican party received more than $25 million in campaign contributions from the oil and energy industry?

There's a lot more that I could write, but you can check it out for yourself at www.saveourenvironment.org I took the one minute of time it takes to use this form to send mail to your governmental representatives on this issue (http://www.saveourenvironment.org/action/item.asp?item=345). Please do the same (http://www.saveourenvironment.org/action/item.asp?item=345). I'm asking for your help by participating the campaign to stop this energy plan and help us move forward towards a safe and more responsible future.

This is an Op-Ed article by Robert Redford in the May 23, 2001, New York Times.

Bush vs. the American Landscape

Listening to President Bush's speech on energy last week left me yearning for a straight story. His rhetoric seemed intended either to frighten or to lull one into a false sense of security. It didn't help that as he presented an energy plan -- developed with help from lobbyists for oil, coal, gas, mining and nuclear power -- the president buttoned up his speech by asking all of us to stop bickering, to set a new tone and listen to each other. Since Vice President Dick Cheney refused even to meet with environmental groups, it seems a rather curious, if not disingenuous, request.

Mr. Bush made it sound so simple. Build tens of thousands of miles of new pipelines, hundreds of oil and gas wells, and more than a thousand new power plants, and it will again be "morning in America." He claims it can be done with little impact. Drilling in the Arctic, off our beaches or anywhere determined to be "necessary" is a harmless matter, he says, thanks to new technologies that render the whole enterprise environmentally friendly. This is simply untrue.

Mr. Cheney has been making a point of telling anyone who will listen that the federal government hasn't granted a new nuclear power permit in 20 years. Nobody has applied for one. Three Mile Island served as a cautionary tale that even the most aggressive corporate energy interests could not ignore. Until now. The president's support for nuclear power is boldly presented with nary a nod to inherent risks associated with nuclear waste, nuclear weapons material or power plant accidents.

A look behind the rhetoric reveals that at the heart of the Bush energy plan are proposals to weaken longstanding environmental safeguards. Americans fought hard over the last three decades for these protections. But the Bush plan holds the corporate energy lobby in higher esteem than ordinary Americans who breathe the air, drink the water and overwhelmingly support protecting our wilderness. Coal and oil companies, despite record profits, now seek enormous new taxpayer subsidies and relief from environmental safeguards as payback for their campaign support.

Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is but a piece of a plan that makes oil and gas exploration and development fair game on nearly all of our public lands, even extraordinary places that were awarded protection as national monuments by the previous administration. The Upper Missouri Breaks in Montana, Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in Utah, and Vermillion Basin in northwestern Colorado may all become subject to exploitation. It's nonsense to think new oil and gas exploration and development won't destroy these incomparable wild places.

Why not tighten fuel economy standards instead? This alone could, over the next 50 years, free up 15 times as much oil as could be produced by drilling in the Arctic, and it would benefit consumers much faster. The administration wants merely to "study" this option. More study? Well, we know what that means. For electricity, simply supporting the higher air conditioner efficiency standards proposed by the previous administration would save 13,000 megawatts during periods of peak demand in 2020, equivalent to the output of dozens of power plants.

Thirty years ago, corporate America danced across the nation dumping toxic waste into our rivers, spewing chemicals into our air and ravaging pristine public lands, all in the name of progress. In response to the horrific environmental damage of the postwar era, a broad coalition of Americans began working to represent public health, safety and environmental concerns in all levels of government. Now we face an administration trying to unravel this work.

Unfortunately, we have the examples of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez accident and innumerable studies proving pollution's ill effect on public health to demonstrate that the stakes could hardly be higher. Solid science clearly shows that global warming exists and that the administration's drill, dig and burn approach will only make it worse. I continue to hope for a reasonable dialogue that actually includes the environmental community, but the administration's posture suggests that is unlikely. If he does not make environmental concerns central to his energy policy, President Bush may well leave the next generation with nothing but ashes to stand in.

The following is an editorial from The Nation, June 11, 2001.

Bush's New Gas Guzzler

George W. Bush's energy plan fudges the facts, raises false alarms, shamelessly peddles halfhearted green measures--all to provide a cover under which to slide the oil industry's wish list. Jimmy Carter, who knows a real energy crisis, in a Washington Post Op-Ed accused the administration of using "misinformation and scare tactics to justify such environmental atrocities as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Bush cites California's troubles as a call to action for a plan that does not address them. It revives nuclear power with no ideas on where to safely put the waste, trashes environmental regulations and airily dismisses international concerns about global warming, as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan pointedly noted in a little-reported speech at Tufts University on May 20. "We do not face a choice between economy and ecology," Annan said. "In fact, the opposite is true: Unless we protect resources and the earth's natural capital, we shall not be able to sustain economic growth."

Bush's plan, crafted in secret sessions with input form industry reps and none from consumer advocates, is a mˇlange of vague ("make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy"), sometimes contradictory suggestions and steps the Bush Administration can take unilaterally (easing regulations for the electric, oil and nuclear industries). It will unleash much squabbling in Congress, as legislators take up other portions of the package. Not only will enviros face off against industros on assorted fronts--the consensus of the moment is that Bush's plan to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness is near-DOA in Congress--but energy-producing states will square off against consuming states.

Industries themselves could be at each other's throats, competing to gain an edge via legislation. Natural gas companies, for instance, have no interest in seeing environmental rules relaxed for coal-burning utilities. Electricity cooperatives will wrangle with electric utilities. Northeast power-generators could tussle with Midwest utilities over emissions. Conservative free-marketeers will decry using the tax code to assist one industry or another. All in all, this is a full-employment project for Washington lobbyists. Expect campaign contributions from energy companies to rise faster than the price of gasoline.

But the many fault lines and divides have yet to be defined, and the possibility of Jim Jefford's switch (still not officially announced at press time--see the editorial, following) injects a new element of uncertainty into the mix. Democrats are in some disarray; senators and House members have some home-state concerns. Think of John Breaux and Mary Landrieu of oil-producing Louisiana, who already have broken with their party to support a tax bill resembling the Bush plan. As the tax-bill fight demonstrates, Republicans need only to peel away a few Bush-friendly Democrats in the Senate to succeed. And in the new House, as one senior Democratic staffer notes, "there are a number of Blue Dog Democrats who get their money from the same people who fund Bush and Cheney." But at the same time, there are House Republicans--including several in California--worrying about energy legislation that rewards price gougers and gives no short-term relief to consumers.

One liberal-leaning Democratic senator surveys the landscape this way: "Senate Democrats should be able to stick together on much of the environmental and policy matters regarding, say, regulations and more resources for conservation and alternatives. It's going to be much harder on the populist front. They're not all going to want to be tough on the industries.

The Democrats' message so far is that Bush and Cheney are just pimping for Big Oil and other energy interests while trampling the environment. Perhaps that will resonate with voters. But it remains to be seen if Democrats can sell a bold alternative approach that promotes conservation, efficiency and renewable energy. At a recent meeting with reporters, House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt dismissed the notion of raising fuel-efficiency standards for cars and SUVs. Like his Republican foes, he fears proposals that might impinge on the American way of life (read: consuming oil in gluttonous amounts).

Republicans think that blaming environmental extremists for the nation's (real or imagined) energy troubles--like California's deregulation mess--is good politics, while the Democrats almost giddily believe environment/energy to be Bush's main vulnerability. Given the muddy legislative swirl Bush's energy plan will stir up, the public will be lucky if the debate stays that starkly defined.

Environmentalist groups should forcibly inject broader public interest considerations into the mix and seek to provoke a real national energy dialogue that goes beyond green-versus-brown accusations and political point-scoring. Any serious, comprehensive energy policy would start by taking the $100 billion the Pentagon wants for a technically dubious National Missile Defense system and investing it in enhancing proven alternative-energy and efficiency technologies. Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydrogen fuel cells (the idea Al Gore pushed during the late campaign and Bush derided, then stole for his energy plan)--all these renewable technologies are proven and feasible. A multibillion-dollar federal investment in them would assure their cost-effectiveness and wider use.

Bush has declared an energy crisis and opened the door to a national discourse on saving energy. The Democrats should say, "Thanks, George," and take the opportunity to supplant his hot air with action.

The following article is from The Nuclear Monitor, Jan/Feb 2001. It is written by Harvey Wasserman, a long-time friend of mine and one of the organizers of the No-Nukes Concerts in Madison Square Garden.

California's Deregulation Disaster

Blackouts, brownouts and soaring electric rates have defined the political landscape of California since last spring. They've transformed the phrase "utility deregulation" into a household epithet. They've stopped in its tracks a nationwide wave of electric restructuring that had already claimed two dozen states, and was about to sweep up the rest. And they've helped create a crisis whose economic and ecological shockwaves will carry deep into the new century.

But the roots of this unnatural disaster lie precisely in the corporate boardrooms of the utility companies now on the brink of bankruptcy. It was their mismanagement and greed that led directly to some of the greatest miscalculations in American business history. Those missteps, and their impact, were clearly predicted by consumer and environmental activists who fought to prevent them from becoming law. "This was a catastrophe we all saw coming," says Dan Berman, author of Who Owns the Sun and an official at the California Public Utilities Commission. "But the power companies had an agenda to push and the money to foist it on the public. Now their reaping the whirlwind."

California's dereg disaster took root in 1996, when the state's three dominant utilities banded together to force on the ratepayers what they expected to be "the largest corporate rip-off in American business history," as Ralph Nader put it.

The plan was simple: Pacific Gas & Electric (then the nation's largest privately owned utility), San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison were caught in a squeeze between their big industrial customers, who were threatening to leave the grid and generate power on their own, and the burden of their bad investments in obsolete generators, mainly nuclear power plants. They were also tired of having their rates regulated by the state's 80-year-old Public Utilities Commission. Primarily, they demanded two things: to make higher profits, and to cash-out their huge investments in four nuclear reactors and a wide range of other deteriorating generators and transmission facilities.

So they proposed this: we'll divest ourselves of our long-standing regulated monopolies over the territories we now serve. We'll also dump much, if not all, of our generating capacity. Regulation of the transmission lines will stay intact. But on the receiving end of those lines, we will compete with other suppliers. Customers will be able to choose from whom they will buy electricity. Competition will rule. Prices will go down. You can even choose "green" energy from companies selling wind and solar.

The price tag for Californians? Somewhere between $20 billion and $28.5 billion in up-front "stranded costs," ie direct payback to the utilities for their bad generating plants, most notably the four decaying reactors. These charges would be levied through "transition fees" and other surcharges buried in their customers' bills, but adding up to as much as 30% of their monthly payments. The utilities also got $90 million in taxpayer money to promote the new scheme, giving them a major leg up on whatever competition might later materialize.

The bill, AB1890, was drafted in utility offices, with help from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which hoped--despite warnings from other environmental groups that the bill was both environmentally and economically unacceptable--that it would lead to increased renewable generation in the state. After a few perfunctory hearings, it passed unanimously by the legislature. Republican governor Pete Wilson, then a presidential candidate, eagerly signed it.

Most consumer and environmental groups were furious over a wide range of issues associated with the legislation, most notably the reactor bailouts, which they worried (correctly) would prolong the operating life of deteriorating reactors and other polluting plants. So in 1998, a broad coalition put a repeal initiative on the ballot. Surmounting virtually impossible odds, the coalition gathered more than 700,000 signatures in less than five months. Initial polls showed them winning repeal by wide margins.

Then the utilities spent more than $40 million to defeat the ballot measure, calling in their chits with labor, ethnic and other organizations around the state. They portrayed deregulation as a means to encourage competition that would lead to consumers saving money. The repeal went down, 70-30%.

But in their haste to cash out, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric made some critical miscalculations.

Most importantly, they assumed there would always be a surplus of cheap, wholesale electricity to re-sell their customers. So they sold off too much of their generating capacity and had too little of their own supply while rates were still frozen as the stranded costs were being paid off. Then came a hot summer and a cold winter. Natural gas prices shot up. Some key generators went down. Storms knocked out transmission lines. The nukes had problems.

But most importantly, the utilities found themselves at the mercy of independent producers who'd snapped up generating capacity and could manipulate the wholesale market. Consumer demand at frozen prices quickly outstripped cheap wholesale supply. PG&E and Southern California Edison were now wounded, bleeding whales at the mercy of sharks they could not control.

Companies like the Carolina-based Duke Power, Reliant of Texas and the Houston-based Enron, the nation's largest natural gas distributor (whose chief executive Kenneth Lay was a key supporter of George W. Bush) made billions selling power at high rates to the companies that had just sold them their generators. By one estimate, in six months' time PG&E and SoCalEd spent $12 billion more on power than they were able to collect from their customers. In some cases, Edison and PG&E were forced to sell juice to consumers at a rate of $64 per megawatt-hour while paying $1,400 for it.

As an example of the sudden profits reaped by power generators supplying California, the Houston-based Dynegy Inc. reported in late January that its earnings for the last quarter of 2000 more than doubled from the previous year, skyrocketing from $45.1 million to $105.9 million. Dynegy did even better, with a net income of $500.5 million compared to $151.9 million in 1999. This more-more-than-tripling of its profits came on revenue that did not even double (from $15.43 billion in 1999 to $29.44 billion in 2000). Enron, Duke Power and others have reported similar profit increases. Clearly, Californians are not only paying more for electricity because of higher energy prices--they are supplying independent power companies with record profits on top of that.

Even rival utilities got into the act. Oregon's Portland General Electric withdrew a proposed rate hike for its own customers when it realized it could sell the power into California at a higher profit. At least two large bauxite smelters in the northwest shut down and realized some $500 million in profits from selling electricity into the southbound grid at rates that made producing aluminum a losing proposition. Perhaps most telling of all, the parent companies of PG&E and SoCalEd made as much as $3 billion selling power to the electric distributors they had just spun off, and which were now pleading for state help to avoid bankruptcy.

Which raises the ultimate question: has the crisis in California actually been one of real shortages? Or has it been a "phony war" caused by manipulation and profiteering.

The answer is not yet clear, because "California designed the world's most complicated market," says Paul Joskow, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and nobody's 100% sure exactly how it works.

But suspicions are widespread the biggest price spikes came not from real supply shortages, but from market manipulations. California Governor Gray Davis made repeated calls to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other national bodies to help fix prices, guarantee supply and punish those gouging California consumers. But if the crisis has illustrated anything, it's the inability of federal agencies to control powerful suppliers whose political clout is exceeded only by their ability to have their way with one of the world's most complex entities, the electric power grid.

"Never again can we allow out-of-state profiteers to hold Californians hostage," vowed a frustrated Davis. But at this point it's not clear who could prevent it. Congress has debated national deregulation bills, but they've gone nowhere. And most were headed in the wrong direction, giving the private companies more license to mess with the system, not less.

None of the two dozen other states that have deregulated has yet suffered a disaster on California's scale, but the results have been decidedly mixed. By promising low rates and real competition, Massachusetts utilities beat back a 1998 repeal the same day it happened in California. But, says Debby Katz of the Citizens Awareness Network, "Massachusetts rates are now some of the highest outside California. The only ones benefiting are the nuclear corporations that have had their bad debts paid on our back."

Similar stories are repeated in nuclear-laden Illinois and Michigan. In Ohio, ratepayers have been saddled with nearly $10 billion in bad reactor debts, and no real competition is on the horizon. In Pennsylvania, citizen groups beat back some of the utilities' stranded cost demands. As a result, some margin has opened up for actual competition. But in Texas, which deregulated right in the midst of the California crisis, and in New York, which is doing it piecemeal, the results are not yet in. In two dozen other states that remain regulated, and in Congress, the term gunshy might apply.

In California itself, Davis is tinkering around the edges of a flawed law and rickety grid. The answer du jour is to build more capacity. But Harvey Rosenfield of the Citizens Utility Board, an early AB1890 opponent, wants to put a sweeping rollback of the deregulation legislation on the 2002 ballot. This time, he says, the utilities' ability to hoodwink the public will be severely constrained by recent memories of tripled electric bills and rolling blackouts.

The private utilities may also have a hard time explaining why two California utilities were immune to the crisis: the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). Both are owned by the public, and both maintain heavy commitments to renewables and energy efficiency. In 1989, SMUD voted to shut its Rancho Seco reactor, and has since pioneered a major shift to solar, wind and biomass energy, with heavy commitments to conservation.

During the crisis, rates in both SMUD and LADWP stayed stable while the utilities actually made money selling power to their embattled private neighbors, underscoring the fact that throughout the United States, public-owned power districts supply electricity cheaper and more reliably than the private utilities. The California crisis has already spurred grassroots movements in Davis and elsewhere to demand municipals of their own. "In the long run," says Berman, "public ownership is central to any real solution to the problems of the electric utility grid."

So is conservation. At the peak of the crisis, Davis ordered widespread efficiency measures that kept demand down without significant impact on the health and safety of the public. "Had the state been more aggressively pursuing efficiency all along," says Coyle, "much of the crisis could have been avoided. Hopefully, a lesson has been learned here--and around the country."

Nonetheless, the constant drumbeat for more generating capacity will be hard to avoid. For its part, the Bush Administration reluctantly extended an order requiring out-of-state power sources to provide available electricity to California, but only until February 7. After that, says new Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the state is on its own. But the Administration already has argued that the California crisis demonstrates the need for new energy production, especially the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. That this position holds no basis in logic--oil is barely used in the U.S. anymore for electricity generation for both economic and environmental reasons--seems to have escaped the new energy policymakers.

But Bush also has called for new natural gas drilling (something that is happening anyway now that gas prices are rising) and for new initiatives that could pave the way for construction of new atomic reactors. For example, the Administration apparently is interested in further streamlining the already streamlined regulations governing new reactor licensing and reactor license extension. And perhaps the biggest stumbling block to new reactors outside their demonstrated economic shortcomings, resolution of the high-level radioactive waste issue, will be coming to a head later this year, when the Department of Energy is scheduled to decide whether to proceed with the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada waste dump and the related "Mobile Chernobyl" waste transportation campaign. At this point, there seems little doubt that the DOE will approve the leaky, earthquake-prone site despite its scientific deficiencies.

While the widespread assumption is that the inevitable new power plants will be fossil- or nuclear-fueled, every U.S. reactor ordered since October 1973 has been cancelled, and as we enter the 21st century, there are no new reactors under construction anywhere in North America or western Europe. Resistance to any new reactor orders would be ferocious to say the least, especially in light of nuclear power's role in prompting the crisis in the first place.

Indeed nuclear's unreliability played a major role in the first wave of California's current power crunch. The same storm that lashed the state in early January boosting power demand sent huge amounts of kelp into Diablo Canyon's intake water system, forcing PG&E with the unpleasant choice of reducing water intake (and thus cutting power) or risking atomic meltdown. Diablo was forced to operate at 20% power even as electrical demand soared.

A year ago, natural gas would have seemed the logical choice for new generating capacity. But prices have soared and aren't likely to come back down soon.

Which leaves what the consumer/environmental community that opposed AB1890 has been arguing for all along--renewables. The most notable new western power plant is now stringing its way along the Oregon-Washington border. It consists of 450 windmills with sufficient capacity to power 70,000 homes. With construction underway in February, electricity could be surging out by December 31, a far faster construction window than is available to any other source. The fuel supply will be cheap, stable and clean. Environmental opposition will be nil.

Thanks to 15,000 windmills built in the 1970s under Gov. Jerry Brown (now mayor of Oakland), California once produced 90 percent of the world's renewable electricity. But the big utilities wanted little to do with them. Last year the world leader's mantle slipped to Germany, which built the equivalent of a large reactor's capacity in wind power.

Had California done the same, things might have been different. "The message is clear," says Coyle. "The power supply needs to be controlled by the public. And efficiency and renewables work. Do we have to go through this again to relearn those lessons?

Harvey Wasserman is Senior Advisor to NIRS. A version of this article appeared in The Nation.

Copyright 2001 Jackson Browne. All rights reserved.