Reviewing the Energy Bill

Huzzah--after six years of getting the shaft, BushCo's much vaunted Energy Bill looks like it's finally going to make it to the President's desk for his signature. And as we've come to expect from BushCo and its network of independent agents in Congress, it doesn't really have much to do with setting forth policies and strategies for changing/challenging/improving the way that we consume and produce energy in this country. Rather, to channel a little Nugent into the proceedings:

Stakes are high and so am I
It's in the air tonight/it's a free for all

That is, a free for all for Big Energy--just the folks who need a little help with their bottom line. Here's a basic summary of the bill from the WaPo:

The bill seeks to encourage more domestic energy production, improve the reliability of the electrical grid, spark development of nuclear power plants and cleaner-burning coal facilities, and encourage more imports of liquefied natural gas. But the legislation includes scores of other measures as diverse as extending daylight saving time, requiring an inventory of offshore U.S. oil and natural gas reserves, and government-funded research to help the oil industry drill in deep water.

And here's some more from the AP:

Efficiency and conservation programs would get about $1.3 billion of the more than $14.1 billion in total tax breaks over 10 years, according to lawmakers who have been briefed on the legislation worked out in negotiations between the House and Senate. About $3 billion in tax breaks would go for renewable energy source, mostly to subsidize wind energy.

Well, that doesn't sound too bad, does it? But here's a little downside from the NYTimes:

While the authors of the energy legislation said it held the potential to transform the way the United States produces and consumes energy, other lawmakers and critics attacked it as a wrongheaded giveaway at a time of huge energy company profits. They said it represented a missed opportunity to take serious steps to reduce the nation's reliance on imported oil or to cut American energy consumption. "This bill is simply a failure," said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and a senior member of the energy committee. "It is a huge waste of money." Even advocates of the bill acknowledge it will do almost nothing to reduce gasoline prices immediately, though they say it sets the stage for diversity in the nation's energy mix in coming years by creating markets for emerging sources like ethanol, wind and biomass. In a provision that may be most noticed by Americans, daylight savings time would be extended in 2007, beginning on the second Sunday in March and lasting until the first Sunday in November, to save electricity.

And Salon's War Room notes this:

The report notes that the nuclear industry "reaped major benefits," including $2 billion in "risk insurance" if there are permitting or regulatory delays in construction of six new nuclear power reactors. The nuclear industry also got loan guarantees for future reactors, including a green light for building a $1.25 billion next-generation power plant. Oil and gas producers did well, too. They got $1.5 billion in tax breaks for deep-well drilling. The coal industry and corn farmers also stand to benefit, as the energy bill's largesse dishes out juicy tax breaks and regulatory incentives for those industries too.

And DailyKos diarist Meteor Blades has this to say:

What we're being saddled with until somebody performs a makeover is energy legislation that includes few specific goals, piles of taxpayer cash for energy industries already making record profits, a half-assed nod to conservation, a nose-thumbing to eco-advocates and a speed-up in public land drilling even though oil and gas companies already have more permits than they can handle. Moreover, the legislation won't fulfill the most basic promise of its proponents - making the U.S. independent of foreign oil. In fact, the Department of Energy itself concluded that within 20 years the energy bill would increase oil imports by 82.9 percent, barely lower than the 84.8 percent expected under current energy policy. In the What Me, Worry world of congressional myopia, that's what passes for progress.

Oh well. It might not matter anyway:

A few days ago Roger Pielke Jr. pointed to a paper (PDF) by Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics called "On development, demography and climate change: The end of the world as we know it?" Pielke called it "refreshingly clear thinking on climate change." That's true, if by "refreshingly clear" he means "weep-silently-aplogize-to-your-children-and-throw-yourself-out-a-window depressing." Abandon hope, all ye who download PDF here. Dyson's argument unfolds in several stages, but the brutal conclusion is simple: "In all likelihood, events are now set to run their course." Here are the five main points made, quoted directly from the abstract: First, that since about 1800 economic development has been based on the burning of fossil fuels, and this will continue to apply for the foreseeable future. Second, due to momentum in economic, demographic, and climate processes,it is inevitable that there will be a major rise in the level of atmospheric CO2 during the twenty-first century. Third, available data on global temperatures ... suggest strongly that the coming warming of the Earth will be appreciably faster than anything that human populations have experienced in historical times. ... Furthermore, particularly in a system that is being forced, the chances of an abrupt change in climate happening must be rated as fair. Fourth ... the range of plausible unpleasant climate outcomes seems at least as great as the range of more manageable ones. The agricultural, political, economic, demographic, social and other consequences of future climate change are likely to be considerable - indeed, they could be almost inconceivable. In a world of perhaps nine billion people, adverse changes could well occur on several fronts simultaneously and to cumulative adverse effect. Finally, the paper argues that human experience of other difficult 'long wave' threats (e.g. HIV/AIDS) reveals a broadly analogous sequence of reactions. In short: (i) scientific understanding advances rapidly, but (ii) avoidance, denial, and reproach characterize the overall societal response, therefore, (iii) there is relatively little behavioral change, until (iv) evidence of damage becomes plain. Apropos carbon emissions and climate change, however, it is argued here that not only is major behavioral changeunlikely in the foreseeable future, but it probably wouldn't make much difference even were it to occur.