Random Environmental Thoughts
Point 1:

"Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy. --Vice President Dick Cheney

Point 2:

If the Bush administration would actually comply with the energy conservation laws passed after the first Gulf War, the U.S. would become less dependent on foreign oil and could easily avoid drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That's the argument behind a lawsuit filed in federal court today by two environmental groups against 14 federal agencies, including the C.I.A. and the Department of Homeland Security. The suit, brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Bluewater Network, charges that by failing to purchase vehicles that run on alternative energy, the feds are in violation of the Energy Policy Act of 1992. The act requires that 75 percent of cars and trucks purchased by federal agencies for use in metro areas be alternative fuel vehicles, running on electricity, ethanol, hydrogen, biodiesel or natural gas.

Point 3:

If the U.S. doesn't invest in hybrid cars, the terrorists have already won. Or so says a group of national security hawks, who have formed an unlikely alliance with enviro-friendly outfits like the Energy Futures Coalition and the National Resources Defense Council to call for reduced dependency on foreign oil. In an open letter to the President on Monday, such unlikely Prius advocates as former CIA director James Woolsey, Reagan administration national security advisor Robert C. (Bud) McFarlane, and Center for Security Policy head and Reagan-era Defense Department official Frank Gaffney, asked that the Bush administration pledge $1 billion over the next five years for hybrid technology research. [...] Defense strategists finding common cause with environmental advocates is strange and cheering news in and of itself. But the bipartisan alliance also offers a useful foreign policy critique of the Bush administration's approach to the Middle East. In a telephone press conference Monday, some of the letter's signers laid out the manifold dangers of maintaining our current energy dependency. Woolsey identified terrorism as one such danger: "The petroleum infrastructure is very vulnerable to terrorists and other attacks. Bin Laden has called for [such] terrorist attacks in the Middle East." Furthermore, he said, the U.S. investment in foreign oil perpetuates terror by funding terrorist-supporting regimes: "The wealth that has gone to the greater Middle East for oil has been used to fund terrorism and its ideological underpinning…Saudi Arabia has spent some 85 to 90 billion dollars in the last thirty years spreading [fundamentalist] beliefs throughout the world." [...] Gaffney raised concern that such a reduction in available petroleum would send oil prices soaring. And, he said, mushrooming prices have far graver consequences than pain at the pump -- including the potential for war with China: "The demand that China has already exhibited, let alone what it may seek in the future…could give rise…to sources of conflict with the United States or others in the West. And potentially violent conflict at that."

When will this administration excise its head from its ass and come to the realization that energy policy is intrinsically tied into global security policy and that good behavior starts from the top--even if individual conservation doesn't change the environment overnight, it's a start to building good practices.