EarthWINS Daily 6.2
November 24, 2003

Table of Contents

1. Liquidation of the Commons
2. Energy Showdown
3. F.B.I. Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies
4. Exxon Rep: CO2 Output to Rise 50 Percent by 2020

1. Liquidation of the Commons
by Adam Werbach

Common Dreams
Nov 23, 2003
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1123-07.htm

When the Bush administration’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency was asked to describe his goals, Gov. Mike Leavitt of Utah summed up his general approach by invoking the Latin term enlibra, which roughly means “in balance.” In typical fashion for the Bush administration, the choice of language is both elegant and misleading. Environmentalists understand balance, but Leavitt’s balance is not the tending of the delicate interaction between nature and humanity in order to ensure that the ecological systems on which we rely are protected. An examination of the Bush administration’s record during its first three years in office demonstrates that it views its role as reestablishing the preeminent right of corporations to take from nature what they need with little regard for the long-term health of nature or for the communities that live downwind or can’t afford bottled water. The “balance” the administration wishes to strike is akin to an affirmative action program for corporate polluters.

There has not been such a wholesale giveaway of our common assets to corporate interests since the presidency of William McKinley. In the 1896 presidential election, McKinley was aided in his battle against the great American populist, William Jennings Bryan, by coal and oil magnate Mark Hanna. Hanna has been cited by Karl Rove, President Bush’s key political adviser, as a major influence and inspiration. Hanna raised more than $4 million in campaign contributions from corporations like Standard Oil and unapologetically blanketed the country with pamphlets suggesting that only a government that catered first to the needs of corporate interests could serve the needs of the people. Upon election, McKinley proceeded to give away large sections of America’s common assets under the direction of Hanna.

The Bush administration, elected with the contributions of America’s largest polluting companies, is on a similar path. Executing the plan are the same people who were lobbying for exemptions and tax breaks before Bush took office, only now they’re being paid by the federal government. For example, the Undersecretary of the Interior, J. Steven Griles, is an industry lobbyist still being paid by his former firm to work on behalf of that firm’s interests rather than on behalf of the interests of the American people.

The destructive effects of the administration’s policies are felt on the ground in places like Gillette, Wyoming.

Gillette, Wyoming

Soon after Bush took office, Vice President Dick Cheney convened a secretive energy task force to craft the administration’s agenda. They recommended two major efforts: lower the environmental bar and pay corporations to jump over it. With the help of Enron’s Ken Lay and other gas and oil industry leaders, they laid out a set of plans to weaken existing environmental regulations and provide a multibillion-dollar package of tax incentives to increase oil and gas production.

If natural gas development made economic and environmental sense in the Powder River Basin, capital from private investors would take the place of government subsidies. This is a gold rush where the gold is provided by Congress. There is a significant amount of natural gas in the area, but it’s embedded within coal deposits deep underground. The only way to get at this natural gas—coalbed methane—is by draining the groundwater to the level of the coal in order to release the gas. To do so requires an astonishing amount of water. The Bureau of Land Management estimates that if all goes ahead as planned, the miners will discard more than 700 million gallons of publicly owned water a year, water that will be pumped out of rapidly dwindling aquifers, nature’s water storage devices. Local ranchers already are complaining that their water wells are running dry and that their land is being invaded by mining companies given title to the minerals beneath the ranchers’ land. The mining of coalbed methane is as expensive as it is wasteful, and the industry has received promises from Congress of a $3 billion tax credit to help them on their way, despite the fact that it makes little economic sense to drill for marginal coalbed methane when larger deposits are elsewhere. In the Powder River Basin alone, the industry is proposing the development of 50,000 new wells. This number clearly highlights the harmful inefficiency of coalbed methane drilling. Each well requires miles of roads and power lines that despoil the landscape and threaten local wildlife. In contrast, Saudi Arabia, which has more than 10 times the natural gas, as well as billions more gallons of oil, has only about 1,000 oil and gas wells in the entire country. Meanwhile the U.S. government agencies normally responsible for protecting the land now serve as customer service organizations for the mining companies.

The Language Conundrum

If the intention behind the Healthy Forests Initiative is to allow logging companies an excuse to cut America’s last old-growth forests, then it’s not surprising that the administration’s Clear Skies Initiative will do as much for clean air as George Bush has done for international diplomacy. The Clear Skies Initiative is the most extensive revision of the Clean Air Act in 13 years. The plan would allow power plants to emit more than five times as much mercury, twice as much sulfer dioxide, and more than one and a half times as much nitrogen oxides as the current Clean Air Act allows.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 is responsible for many of the improvements in air quality that America has seen over the past three decades. The skies over most cities are cleaner, and after the work of the Clinton administration, there remained only a few remaining hurdles to overcome before the main goals of the act would have been achieved.

One of the compromises made when the Clean Air Act was passed allowed a few existing power plants the right to continue to operate without new pollution controls. The act’s authors knew that without major repairs the plants eventually would be decommissioned. The law stated that if major repairs were undertaken, the old polluting power plants would need to employ state-of-the-art pollution-control technology. More than three decades later, these plants are still polluting, largely because they’ve been illegally repaired and upgraded without enhancing their pollution-control devices. The federal government filed suit against these power companies during the Clinton administration. Once Bush was elected, power companies began working to roll back the Clean Air Act regulations and to halt the settlement negotiations that were already under way.

With this in mind, it’s not surprising to learn that the power companies are major contributors to the Republican Party and had access to Cheney’s energy task force. The Edison Electric Institute, an industry trade group with members who are Clean Air Act violators, had more than 10 contacts with the Cheney task force and contributed nearly $600,000 to the Republican Party from 1999 to 2002.

Coalbed methane development, the Healthy Forests Initiative, and the Clear Skies proposal are three examples of the Bush administration’s efforts to undo 30 years of environmental progress. Unlike previous attacks on the nation’s environmental laws—by Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior James Watt and by Newt Gingrich—these attacks are made in front of scenic backdrops and with flowery language while the real agendas are hammered out behind closed doors. It takes an expert in decoding the Bush administration’s double-speak to differentiate the Bush-Cheney 2004 Web site from the Sierra Club’s. But the Bush policies are like week-old sushi advertised as fresh fish. The media has faithfully reported the names of the Bush administration’s bills—Healthy Forests, Clear Skies—without exposing the irony to the public.

In the end, Leavitt was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate for the post of EPA administrator, despite the fact that he did not reject any of the Bush administration’s environmental policies. Democrats on Capitol Hill pounded their chests for a while, and then quietly approved him. Leavitt now intends to bring more “balance” to a relationship that is already skewed toward corporate interests. No one at the hearings bothered to ask why the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency would set his goal as balance rather than protection.

Adam Werbach is the executive director of the Common Assets Defense Fund and a member of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. He is a former president of the Sierra Club, a position to which he was elected at the age of 23.

Originally published in In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=459_0_1_0_C

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Sunday, November 23, 2003
CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1123-08.htm 

The only remarkable thing about the 2003 energy policy bill greasing its way through Congress has been the energy of the avaricious lobbyists for the oil, gas, coal and nuclear corporations. But then there were tens of billions of dollars in it for them in tax escapes, loan guarantees, and outright subsidies along with weaker law enforcement for polluters of your air, water and your public lands.

The legislation (H.R. 6) is 1700 pages of giveaways and contempt for the American people -- their health, safety and pocketbooks. It was debated all of one hour by the House of Representatives under the rule of dictator Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), who raises more campaign cash from lobbyists the more he takes America down.

On November 21, 2003, the Senate had a showdown vote to cut off debate after two days on this bad bill. The bad guys lost -- barely. They're going to try again in a few days. However, in a way the concentrated corporate powers over our government nearly achieved a new high dirty- water mark toward flooding Congress completely. They nearly defeated an opposition composed of both leading liberal and conservative groups. And they ignored editorials from dozens of leading newspapers, including a ferocious one by the Wall Street Journal acidly titled "Archer-Daschle-Midland." The Journal meant to convey that most of the ethanol subsidies go not to farmers but to giant agribusiness companies, in cohoots with the leader of the Democrats in the Senate -- Tom Daschle (D-SD). On the right in opposition were the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, and Citizens Against Government Waste, irritated over subsidies, giveaways and other corporate welfare boondoggles such as financing a shopping mall that included a Hooters restaurant in Louisiana.

On the liberal side were the auto and electrical workers unions (so much for Bush's jobs argument), U.S. Public Interest Research Group, American Lung Association, ACORN, Clean Water Action Project, Consumer Federation of America, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility. Among the reasons for their opposition were provisions letting manufacturers of the toxic chemical MTBE avoid liability for contaminating thousands of underground sites in the United States and leaving the taxpayers with an estimated $29 billion cleanup bill.

Weighing in to oppose the bill were the National league of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the American Public Works Associations, the National Association of Counties and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.

And still the corporate Goliaths almost won!

Listen to the way the Denver Post -- a conservative paper -- described the legislation: "It eases environmental restrictions to promote drilling and mining on public lands, provides tax help to already profitable producers of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power, requires no progress on tightening emissions from vehicles or smokestacks, and adds insult to injury by subsidizing the purchase of monster gas-guzzlers, such as the Humvee."

The Washington Post wrote: "The House passed an enormous energy bill. . . .that would remove tariffs from imported Chinese ceiling fans [for Home Depot], pay a half a billion dollars to chop down trees for fuel, ship bomb-grade uranium abroad. . . ." Regarding the uranium exports, top nuclear experts denounced that section because it would make it easier for terrorists to make a nuclear bomb. Where is George W. Bush to demand that this item be put on his cue cards?

One Senator from a mid-western state told me that the White House called him up and asked, "how many plants do you want in your state?". The White House becomes a peddlar for corporate socialism.

The closeness of the vote was due to the expansion of ethanol production with a taxpayer subsidy. Usually stand-up Democratic Senators like Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) caved before the ethanol provision and a gasification plant loan guarantee. Until that happened, Dorgan was the most eloquent denouncer of the legislation "if you put ear rings on a hog, it's still a hog," he said, (before he got his necklace).

In coming weeks, the stench of this pork-legislation will emit from the newspapers and television programs digging into its many pages. The nearly 70-year safeguard against public utility holding company speculation and the instability that kept electric companies stable would be repealed in this age of Enronitis and other drooling speculators in waiting.

Some day, stark paybacks for campaign cash by lawmakers will be considered illegal bribery. One provision in the bill gives a $100 million windfall for a large entertainment and retail complex near Syracuse. The boss of the development company is Robert Congel, who has raised more than $100,000 for Bush and recently hosted a major fundraiser outside Syracuse for Vice President Dick Cheney.

In the nineteen twenties, Will Rogers, the satiric commentator, said that "Congress is the best money can buy." If he only knew how big the bargains have become. (For more information see web site: http://www.opensecrets.org/)

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3. F.B.I. Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies
by Eric Lichtblau
Nov 23, 2003
Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1122-09.htm

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.

The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used "training camps" to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.

F.B.I. officials said in interviews that the intelligence-gathering effort was aimed at identifying anarchists and "extremist elements" plotting violence, not at monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters.

The initiative has won the support of some local police, who view it as a critical way to maintain order at large-scale demonstrations. Indeed, some law enforcement officials said they believed the F.B.I.'s approach had helped to ensure that nationwide antiwar demonstrations in recent months, drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters, remained largely free of violence and disruption.

But some civil rights advocates and legal scholars said the monitoring program could signal a return to the abuses of the 1960's and 1970's, when J. Edgar Hoover was the F.B.I. director and agents routinely spied on political protesters like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we're going back to the days of Hoover."

Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University who has written about F.B.I. history, said collecting intelligence at demonstrations is probably legal.

But he added: "As a matter of principle, it has a very serious chilling effect on peaceful demonstration. If you go around telling people, `We're going to ferret out information on demonstrations,' that deters people. People don't want their names and pictures in F.B.I. files."

The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass and discredit Hoover's political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro, led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities.

Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event "open to the public."

Mr. Ashcroft said the Sept. 11 attacks made it essential that the F.B.I. be allowed to investigate terrorism more aggressively. The bureau's recent strategy in policing demonstrations is an outgrowth of that policy, officials said.

"We're not concerned with individuals who are exercising their constitutional rights," one F.B.I. official said. "But it's obvious that there are individuals capable of violence at these events. We know that there are anarchists that are actively involved in trying to sabotage and commit acts of violence at these different events, and we also know that these large gatherings would be a prime target for terrorist groups."

Civil rights advocates, relying largely on anecdotal evidence, have complained for months that federal officials have surreptitiously sought to suppress the First Amendment rights of antiwar demonstrators.

Critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, for instance, have sued the government to learn how their names ended up on a "no fly" list used to stop suspected terrorists from boarding planes. Civil rights advocates have accused federal and local authorities in Denver and Fresno, Calif., of spying on antiwar demonstrators or infiltrating planning meetings. And the New York Police Department this year questioned many of those arrested at demonstrations about their political affiliations, before halting the practice and expunging the data in the face of public criticism.

The F.B.I. memorandum, however, appears to offer the first corroboration of a coordinated, nationwide effort to collect intelligence regarding demonstrations.

The memorandum, circulated on Oct. 15 — just 10 days before many thousands gathered in Washington and San Francisco to protest the American occupation of Iraq — noted that the bureau "possesses no information indicating that violent or terrorist activities are being planned as part of these protests" and that "most protests are peaceful events."

But it pointed to violence at protests against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as evidence of potential disruption. Law enforcement officials said in interviews that they had become particularly concerned about the ability of antigovernment groups to exploit demonstrations and promote a violent agenda.

"What a great opportunity for an act of terrorism, when all your resources are dedicated to some big event and you let your guard down," a law enforcement official involved in securing recent demonstrations said. "What would the public say if we didn't look for criminal activity and intelligence at these events?"

The memorandum urged local law enforcement officials "to be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts" to counterterrorism task forces run by the F.B.I. It warned about an array of threats, including homemade bombs and the formation of human chains.

The memorandum discussed demonstrators' "innovative strategies," like the videotaping of arrests as a means of "intimidation" against the police. And it noted that protesters "often use the Internet to recruit, raise funds and coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations."

"Activists may also make use of training camps to rehearse tactics and counter-strategies for dealing with the police and to resolve any logistical issues," the memorandum continued. It also noted that protesters may raise money to help pay for lawyers for those arrested.

F.B.I. counterterrorism officials developed the intelligence cited in the memorandum through firsthand observation, informants, public sources like the Internet and other methods, officials said.

Officials said the F.B.I. treats demonstrations no differently than other large-scale and vulnerable gatherings. The aim, they said, was not to monitor protesters but to gather intelligence.

Critics said they remained worried. "What the F.B.I. regards as potential terrorism," Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said, "strikes me as civil disobedience."

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4. Exxon Rep: CO2 Output to Rise 50 Percent by 2020
Reuters

Thursday 20 November 2003
http://truthout.org/docs_03/112203H.shtml

HOUSTON, Texas - Worldwide annual emissions of carbon dioxide, considered a culprit in global warming, are expected to increase by 3.5 billion tons, or 50 percent, by the year 2020, an executive for ExxonMobil Corp said.

At the same time, global demand for energy will rise by 40 percent as the world population increases and economies grow, said Randy Broiles, global planning manager for Exxon's oil and gas production unit.

"Between now and 2020 we estimate increases of some 3.5 billion tons per year of additional carbon emissions, so it's definitely increasing," Broiles said Wednesday at an energy conference sponsored by accounting and consulting firm Deloitte.

He said about 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, go into the earth's atmosphere each year from power plants, cars and other sources.

Experts say the United States, which has the world's largest economy and 4 percent of its population, is responsible for about 25 percent of so-called "greenhouse" gases now produced, but Broiles said most future growth in output will come from developing countries.

"Eighty percent of that number, 80 percent of 3.5 billion tons, is going to be driven by those developing countries, those economies that are growing at the 4 to 5 percent range, so that's where it's coming from," he said.

 A huge increase in the number of cars will cause part of the pollution growth.

Broiles said there are now 15 cars for every 1,000 people in the world, but ExxonMobil expects that number to rise to 50 cars per 1,000 by 2020.

He said ExxonMobil foresees a 40 percent increase in energy demand even though humans are boosting their energy efficiency by about 1 percent a year. Despite advances in technology most energy will still come from fossil fuels, and in particular oil and gas, of which there remain very large reserves, he said.

"The oil resource base is huge -- it's huge -- and we expect it to satisfy world demand growth well beyond 2020," he said.

Originally posted on CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/11/20/climate.gas.reut/index.html

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