Tell Your Senator: NO on Dirty Energy Bills! « It’s Getting Hot In Here

The Energy Bill is getting dirtier as it moves towards passage in the Senate. What started off as a combination of decent and dirty policies is losing some of its better aspects and picking up dirtier ones.

The Energy Bill promotes ethanol, coal, nuclear, landfills and incinerators. All of these policies will irreparably harm the communities who must live with these dirty energy sources. All the while, the best policies to promote wind and solar were just ripped out of the bill today.

For those seeking some of the dirty details on the ever-changing energy bill, see our website at: www.energyjustice.net/energybill/

Today, after removing the Renewable Electricity Standard from the bill to pick up 7 needed votes to break a filibuster, they still fell one vote shy of the 60 they need, so Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is going to pull out the tax package (that moves oil and gas subsidies towards renewables) and try again later today.

Some of the dirty aspects are going away along with the clean parts of this and the Renewable Electricity Standard. However, the main dirty aspects still present in the bill are:

the massive 5-fold increase in the ethanol mandate
the coal subsidies (the tax credit may go away, but at least the subsidies for carbon sequestration experiments will be in there)
expansion of a nuclear industry liability cap

Other, related dirty energy subsidies that are urgently needing action (but on other bills) are:

the attempt to put UNLIMITED billions in loans for new nuclear power reactors into the Appropriations bill [more on this below]
the attempt to put coal-to-liquids in the Farm Bill

APPROPRIATIONS BILL:

The “Omnibus Appropriations Bill” (which funds the entire government to operate for 2008) is in negotiation right now. The House-Senate Appropriation negotiators have tentatively agreed to giving an UNLIMITED loan guarantees to the nuclear industry (no legally-binding cap).

While there’s no legal cap, the report language (indicating congress’s intent) is to spend these amounts:

$25 Billion for new nuclear reactors
$10 Billion for renewables
$10 Billion for Coal-to-Liquids
$2 Billion for Uranium Enrichment
$2 Billion for Coal-to-Gas

It would also include Iraq War spending with no restrictions!

So… what are you waiting for? Call your senators NOW. Leave a message if you can’t reach someone. Let them know to vote NO on the current energy bill and to the blank checks for coal and nukes in the Appropriations bill!

Thanks!

Mike Ewall
215-743-4884
Energy Justice Network

About Mike

Mike Ewall has been involved in grassroots environmental justice organizing since 1991. He is founder of ActionPA and the Energy Justice Network, working in Pennsylvania and globally to help grassroots community groups tackle polluting energy and waste industries. Through his research and networking, Mike has educated many students and community groups on the hazards posed by a wide range of energy and waste technologies and has helped them work together in campaigns to protect vulnerable communities from these dirty industries. His accomplishments include defeating two incinerator projects in his home county near Philadelphia, helping halt a nuclear waste dump that was to be built in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, stopping a mandatory water fluoridation law in Pennsylvania and stopping the nation's most urban proposal for a liquefied natural gas terminal (in Philadelphia). Through his grassroots support work, many communities have achieved victories against power plants, landfills, incinerators, medical waste facilities and other polluting industries. His experiences range from fighting for environmental justice in rural and suburban communities in Pennsylvania to helping protest environmental racism in the state's urban centers (primarily Chester, Harrisburg and in Philadelphia, where large polluting industries exist and where more have been proposed). In his 16 years of involvement, Mike has been a leader in student and anti-corporate movements, serving in various roles in the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC). He is one of many co-founders of the Energy Action Coalition that runs this really cool blog. Through this student organizing, he has field organized and spoken on over 100 campuses in over 25 states. Since Pennsylvania deregulated its electric industry in 1999, Ewall has been focusing on energy marketing issues. That year, he launched a boycott of Green Mountain Energy in order to call attention to their marketing of dirty and deceptive energy products. He's been a national leader in exposing the perils of biomass incineration, biofuels and other dirty energy technologies which masquerade as clean. He is the author of the nation's strongest and cleanest Renewable Portfolio Standard legislation, introduced in Pennsylvania's state senate in 2003.

3 Responses to “Tell Your Senator: NO on Dirty Energy Bills!”

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1 Robin Feb 28th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

NO to Dirty Companies like Green Mountain Energy

Several years ago a Green Mt rep called me and convinced me to switch from the energy company I had been using for 20 years and never had a problem with over to them because of the “green” benefits at a lower rate. They said they had accessed my total usage for the past 12 months from the other company and averaged it out equally so I could have the same payment each month - no more high summer bills. Sounded great so I switched and all was fine (sort of)for a couple years. After getting frustrated with my bill arriving at inconsistent times each month, I switched to another. Then Green Mountain sent me a goodbye bill for over $3,000!!! Saying I used more than my allotment.
After going round and round over several months, a rep finally admitted the reason it happened was because Green Mt never came out to read my meter until after I switched, and apologized that it was negligence on their part because they were a new company and didn’t have all the kinks worked out. I thought that was the end of it until several years later I received a call from a collection agency.

This is beyond outrageous. I was a residential account with an average $400/month bill. What utility company would allow a customer to get over $3,000 behind and never call, send a letter, or shut off their utilities - just continue billing and accepting payment of the same amount each month????
This company is frightening!
Robin Rosen, Sugar Land, Texas

1 After Gutenberg » No Oil Baron Left Behind Trackback on Dec 18th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
2 Oljeberoende och efterfrågan på kisel « Lunkens blogg Trackback on Dec 19th, 2007 at 6:38 am

It’s Getting Hot In Here