Phil Gutis's Blog: Moving Beyond Oil

Best of Green! NRDC Chosen "Best Political Watchdog" by TreeHugger!

2010-04-08T22:55:45Z

On behalf of all of NRDC -- our Board, our Members, supporters and activists and, of course, our staff -- a huge thank you to the editors and readers of TreeHugger. This afternoon, the NRDC family learned that NRDC was chosen as the “Best Political Watchdog” as part of TreeHugger's annual Best of Green competition.

Particularly gratifying was that NRDC was the choice of both the TreeHugger editors and its readers. Also gratifying were the very nice words that accompanied the selection:

The green movement equally needs people storming the barricades and walking the halls of power and working the lobbies in Washington, and there is no better example of doing the latter successfully than the NRDC. As environmental crusader and friend-of-TreeHugger Ed Begley Jr put it, "NRDC has been our tireless architects of change for decades. No one group does more for the environment than them."

What more could we say?

Liquidity Traps and Clunkers

2009-08-06T04:30:11Z

Late last month, we moved fast and became one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who trashed a clunker as part of the government's Cash for Clunkers program. Thanks to the government subsidy, we received more than $4,500 for our 1998 Ford Explorer, well more than the $1,000 we would have received without the stimulus program. And we may have as much as doubled our gas mileage with our new Chevy HHR (pictured below with Max, who apparently likes his new cat toy.)

Increased fuel efficiency. Added economic stimulus. All of that I knew. What I didn't know until reading this week's Economist is that by taking advantage of the government program we may have helped burst what John Maynard Keynes called the "liquidity trap."

According to his theory, consumers may become so worried about the economy that they cling to as much liquid wealth as possible, cutting their spending sharply and thereby triggering precisely the slump they feared.

The Economist endorses the Cash for Clunkers program and says it is a piece of stimulus well worth its salt from an economic perspective. Less clear, the article says, are the environmental benefits of the program, but on this question let's look at the numbers (and related commentary) released by the Department of Transportation earlier this week:

Cash for Clunkers transactions are generating a 61 percent increase in vehicle fuel economy. The average fuel economy of new vehicles purchased under the program is 25.4 MPG, and the average fuel economy of trade-ins is 15.8 MPG. The average increase in fuel economy is 9.6 MPG, or a 61 percent improvement.

Thus far, 83 percent of trade-ins under the program are trucks, and 60 percent of new vehicle purchases are cars. The program is working far better than anyone anticipated at moving consumers out of old, dirty trucks and SUVs and into new more fuel-efficient cars.

Cars purchased under the program are, on average, 18 percent above the average fuel economy of all new cars currently available, and 63 percent above the average fuel economy of cars that were traded in. This means the program is raising the average fuel economy of the fleet, while getting the dirtiest and most polluting vehicles off the road.

We also paid almost $700 in sales tax on the new car. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of car buyers (if the Cash for Clunkers program receives new funding) and the cash infusion into horribly depleted state and local budgets suddenly becomes another powerful argument for the program.

The Economist ends its article by quoting NRDC friend Jack Hidary of SmartTransportation.org, who notes that "car dealers are now advertising the 'total cost of ownership' of vehicles, not just the purchase price, drawing the attention of consumers to differences in fuel efficiency between vehicles and estimating how much it would cost to fill them up with gas each year."

Busting the liquidity trap. Increasing the fuel efficiency of the national auto fleet. And changing the way that Americans look at the lifetime cost of their cars. Where's the downside?

Clunkermania Continues

2009-07-31T16:28:47Z

It felt good, I'll admit, to see the headline on The New York Times website last night. Apparently the $1 billion fund Congress had provided for the Cash for Clunkers program was almost exhausted. In less than a week, more than 250,000 people had traded in their old cars for newer models.

I was pleased, of course, because we were among those who rushed to a local dealership as soon as the Obama Administration finalized the rules for the program. As I wrote yesterday, we traded in a 1999 Ford Explorer that my husband had inherited for a new Chevy HHR. We qualified for a $4,500 benefit plus $165 additional for the value of the recyclable materials in the old car.

We also went from a vehicle that, at best, got 16 miles to the gallon to one that does at least 30 and perhaps even as much as 36 miles to the gallon on the highway.

In the Times story about the program, Congressman Ed Markey, an environmental hero who has been leading efforts to adopt energy and climate legislation, said participants in the Cash For Clunkers program are getting a 69 percent improvement in fuel economy, with the trade-ins being mostly sport utility vehicles, trucks and vans with over 100,000 miles, being replaced with new passenger cars.

“Cash for Clunkers may have run out of cash, but America’s consumers haven’t run out of clunkers,” Markey told the Times, adding that the program should be extended to cover 1 million vehicles, about four times the number covered so far.

In the same story, Senators Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, and Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, were quoted as saying that they will insist that any extension of the program require even high minimum fuel economy improvement and that provisions be made for lower-income buyers to trade clunkers for more efficient used cars. Those would be welcome improvements to the program.

All of this is great news for the economy and the planet. As the Cash for Clunkers program demonstrates, connecting economic progress with environmental well-being is what works. Call me crazy, but I believe that's the line of argument that will ultimately convince Congress to adopt clean energy climate legislation this fall.

A Car Named Fred

2009-07-30T16:18:39Z

More than a year ago, I came out of the closet. (No, not that one. I’ve been out of that closet for decades.) I came out as an owner of a SUV, a hulking 1998 Ford Explorer that my husband inherited years ago.

In my confession, I said that we’d had it, that rising gas prices and embarrassment meant that the Explorer had to go. With an average fuel efficiency rating of 16 miles per gallon, the Explorer was costing us a fortune and doing nothing good for the planet either.

Well, I’m embarrassed again to admit that it took more than a year -- and a hefty incentive from the government in the form of the Cash for Clunkers program – but last night we picked up our new more fuel-efficient car. And while a year ago, I said I would never consider buying an American car because I was so angry at Detroit, we ended up buying American.

After much agonizing, we ended up with the modern-day equivalent of a station wagon: a Chevy HHR in a sparkly royal blue. We promptly named it Fred.

How did we end up with an HHR? We thought about buying a second Civic hybrid or even buying a new Toyota Prius. But with our family of 8 (two humans, five dogs and a confused cat) and seemingly endless home renovations, we decided that we needed more space than either of those cars would provide.

And of the station wagon type vehicles, the HHR does fairly well. Twenty eight average city and 32 average highway. This car is unlikely to spend much time in a city so I’m thinking that our mileage will be much closer – and hopefully higher – than the 32 average.

I would have liked to do better mileage and emissions wise, but doubling what we were getting isn’t bad. And we’re going to do our darndest to keep this car in good shape so that if there is a technological breakthrough, we’ll be able to trade it in and perhaps double the mileage again.

As for the Explorer, it is on its way to be shredded or compacted. We did end up getting $4,500 from the government plus another $165 as compensation for the money the dealership is likely to make on selling some of the recyclable pieces of the Explorer.

I’ve never enjoyed the process of buying a car; this year it seemed even worse. The information on fuel rankings and global warming pollution is confusing and hard to find. American manufacturers still lag way behind what’s possible; foreign-made cars often seemed shoddy or, alternatively, way too luxurious and pricey.

Even the clunker program – which, for us, did lead to a bonus of $3,500 off our car because the Ford was only worth about $1,000 in trade in – led to grumpiness at the dealership. (Apparently there were 16 pages of forms that needed to be filled out for each clunker.)

But it is over for now. Since I am, at heart, an optimist, I have confidence that the next time will be easier to do the right thing. Even with the compromises we had to make, I can’t let myself forget that we did make progress. Slow progress, yes, but progress nonetheless.

The New Energy Economy: Stories from the Frontlines

2009-01-21T14:38:33Z

A few days ago, a tanker truck worked its way up my driveway and plugged into my propane tank. About a thousand dollars later, it pulled away and slipped off to make its next delivery.

Nothing newsworthy there. That’s typically how most fuels are delivered either to a home or a gas station. But Steve Cowell and Conservation Services Group, the firm he runs in Massachusetts, have long had a different vision for fuel delivery. CSG focuses on energy efficiency and, as Ashok Gupta, Director of NRDC’s Energy Program says, “CSG is one of the best at delivering energy efficiency, especially in the affordable housing sector."

“Delivering energy efficiency” is a new term for most of us and it can be a mind twister. The idea is that by making our homes more efficient, we can, in effect, give ourselves fuel. At very low cost. Instead of megawatts, some describe fuel efficiency as delivering negawatts or creating fuel from nothing.

I recently spoke with Steve, who is a member of Environmental Entrepreneurs, a national community of individual business leaders who, working closely with NRDC, advocate for good environmental policy while building economic prosperity. Like many of us, he's focused on the current recession and what it will take to revive the economy.

Steve traces much of the current economic turmoil to the energy prices that soared last year. “The housing crisis,” he said, “was begat by the energy crisis.”

“Energy prices pushed homeowners over the edge,” Steve explained, adding that he fears what could come next after the Obama Administration and Congress begin to pump money into the economy. “As we get out of a recession, energy prices are going to go up again,” he said. “We need to lop off the next spike. We can’t allow our economy to lurch from recession to an over-heated state.”

One way to get stability, Steve said, is through better energy policies. And one way to get to better energy policy is through energy efficiency.

Steve says that delivering efficiency – taking steps to weatherproof homes offices, install better insulation, smart thermostats and energy-sipping appliances – is equivalent to putting an oil rig in every front yard. “Compare efficiency to drilling,” he wrote in a recent Huffington Post blog, “and it's clear that we can save more oil by insulating and weatherizing homes in the Northeast than we could ever produce by drilling in the entire outer Continental shelf.”

And at a fraction of the cost. With the economic benefits accruing here in the United States as opposed to the Middle East or Venezuela. One of the most interesting things about CSG and others like it is that they are hiring. “Our workforce has increased 30 percent this year,” Steve said. “Fifty jobs in the last two months. And many of them are refugees from the construction trades.”

After talking with Steve – and getting that propane bill -- we went on a bit of an efficiency tear in our house. We covered some of our draftier windows, bought gaskets for our electrical outlets and unplugged a VCR that hasn’t been used in years. I put my home office on power strips so that when I’m done working, I hit one switch and everything powers down, including my new and adored printer/scanner/fax.

Sitting at my desk talking with Steve, I realized how idiotic and wasteful we’ve been about energy. I’m optimistic that increasing numbers of us – from regular folks like me to our new President, state and business leaders across the country -- are coming to that same realization. In fact, I’m pretty sure that smart energy will be the story of the early part of this century. The technology is there, the political will is increasing and as a people, we’re ready. Very ready.

Breaking News: Utah Leases Blocked

2009-01-18T03:15:42Z

Update, 11:31 eastern, from the NRDC News Release:

More than 110,000 acres of Utah wilderness will be protected from oil and gas companies as a result of a ruling last night by Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the U.S. District Court. Judge Urbina granted a temporary restraining order that prevents the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from moving forward with these land leases. A coalition of environmental groups -- led by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Wilderness Society, and Earthjustice -- filed a lawsuit on December 17, 2008 to prevent the leasing of public lands.

"This ruling is a huge victory in protecting our nation's pristine wildernes from destruction due to oil and gas drilling," said Sharon Buccino, senior attorney for NRDC. "The case will now be heard in court, and we will do all we can to permanently protect Utah's wilderness."

Original post:

The Bush Administration's attempt to lease some of our most treasured lands for oil drilling was blocked today by a federal district.

District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina issued a temporary restraining order against the Department of Interior's efforts to lease land that NRDC Trustee Robert Redford calls "one of America's few remaining wildnerness places."

Citing Winter v Natural Resources Defense Council, Juge Urbina offered four reasons when a federal court can issue temporary restraining orders:

Likely success on the merits.
Likely irreparable harm in absence of preliminary relief.
The balance of equities "tips in his favor."
That an injunction is "in the public interest."

In the remainder of his five-page ruling, Judge Urbina discusses why NRDC and the other environmental groups who sued are likely to succeed on each of those points.

The ruling, as Sharon Buccino, the Director of NRDC's Lands Program, noted in an email is a "great win."

Stay tuned for continuing analysis and next steps in this remarkable last-gasp case against the Bush Administration's failed stewardship of our public lands.

Why We Need a Good Obama Speech and Soon

2008-12-17T15:10:33Z

Call me a masochist. I've been doing some reading of Jimmy Carter's speeches lately and I'm struck by two points: he called for all the right stuff when it came to energy policy, but, and most importantly, he fell completely flat in inspiring us as a nation to rally and cut our energy use and our dependence on foreign oil.

I heard last night from an influential environmentalist and NRDC trustee. She wondered if NRDC is truly pleased with the environment and energy officials chosen by President-elect Barack Obama and said: "I just don't feel the urgency from this group....where is the fire?"

A very valid question and one that should give us great pause. The Blogojevich pay for play investigation, the continuing fallout of the various financial scandals and the bailouts are dominating the news.

But we also haven't heard much inspiration from Obama lately.

Now to be fair, this is a time for putting together a team, for the endless news conferences with soon-to-be government officials who tend to -- appropriately? -- seem rather scared and sober about the responsibilities they are soon to take on. And as Obama himself has noted, we only have one President at a time.

But I wonder -- worry? -- if governing will strip Obama of his ability to inspire. I know I could use a good Obama speech right about now, one like he delivered election night. One like he gave at the Democratic convention. Hell, I'll even take a version of his standard stump speech.

I do believe that the President-elect is picking an excellent team to lead. And I hope that he won't be so lost in the nuances and challenges of government that he'll lose his ability to inspire.

I can't even begin to say how tragic it would be for Obama to turn into Jimmy Carter 2.0. Right on the policy yet so lacking on the inspiration.

Google's Schmidt: "Solving Every Problem At Once"

2008-12-02T13:38:05Z

A few days ago, a bunch of us left NRDC's office and walked a few blocks downtown after work to hear a talk by Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt. The event -- organized by NRDC Trustee Wendy Schmidt -- was billed as an opportunity to hear what one of the leading voices in the business world is thinking about the new Big Three: economy, energy and the environment.

Eric is a forthright and engaging speaker. The stories he tells are rooted in experience, "real conversations" as he says. And he grounds his arguments in another reality, the reality that his day job requires him to make money for Google shareholders. Lots and lots of money.

But Google is also known for its corporate enterprise, for thinking big thoughts and pushing really big goals. And as chairman, Schmidt must be in charge of setting the biggest and boldest goals. Here's one:

"Is there a way," Schmidt posited, "is there a way to solve every known problem at once?"

"I'm tired of everyone complaining," he continued. "I've learned something here: do the right thing and you can solve multiple problems."

Let's go through the list: energy prices are too high, energy security, how many wars are being fought over oil now and in the future, what about job creation, especially in the rural areas? What about building businesses that are exportable outside of the United States to create wealth for Americans ... oh and yeah, why don't we solve the climate problem at the same time.

Watch the following video to get Eric's answer. And to hear from Dan Reicher, a former NRDC staffer and former Assistant Secretary of Energy for renewables and efficiency (who is on the lists of possible nominees for Energy Secretary in the Obama Administration). Also joining the conversation is Ralph Cavanagh, Co-Director of NRDC's Energy Program, and NRDC President Frances Beinecke. You can also read Google's thoughts at transforming our economy through clean energy at this Google Knol.

Its tempting to dismiss this audacious goal, as Eric does jokingly, with a big ole "yeah right." But as with so much else that comes from the brains of Google, there's real there there. And that's really good news for Google shareholders, the economy and oh yeah the planet.

Getting Preachy

2008-11-30T16:17:05Z

Maybe it's the start of the holiday season, which has long been recognized to increase stress. Or perhaps it was the news from India where terrorists killed almost 200 people and injured hundreds more. Whatever the cause, I've found myself getting preachy of late.

In my day job, I counsel my colleagues to stay positive, to focus on the solutions that each and every one of them is putting forward to generate real progress for our environmental challenges. And I've tried to do the same thing with my writings on Switchboard.

But it is all too easy to slip into anger and preachiness when reading about last-minute land grabs and regulations proposed by the Bush administration or continued intransigence by the dirty fuel and auto industries. Earlier this week, it was a piece in the Washington Post titled "The Car of the Future -- but at a Price" that made me question the future.

The story by reporter Steve Mufson includes a colorful quote from James Womack, a longtime management expert who has written extensively about the auto industry.

"You'd think from reading the media that we have had a burial ceremony at Arlington cemetery for the last pickup truck," Womack said. "I can easily imagine three years from now when the public is focused on a new set of priorities . . . that this whole thing would go poof."

Our national attention span is indeed short. And perhaps that most of all is makes me feel a bit preachy. The idea that all of the promise that has been inspired by technological change and new business leadership and the pledges of energy and climate action by President-elect Obama could in fact all dissipate into nothingness. It has happened before: Jimmy Carter, for example, had solar panels installed on the White House roof. Ronald Reagan instantly took them down.

What's different now? Will a worldwide economic crisis take us into a new future? Will technology make the difference? A President of my generation? All of the above?

It is my bet that it will be President Obama harnessing the opportunity of crisis and power of technology. As he told delegates to a climate meeting in California a few weeks ago:

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious. Stopping climate change won't be easy. It won't happen overnight. But I promise you this: When I am President, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

Those realistic yet hopeful words more than anything else should be enough to counter any feelings of stress or negativity. Whenever I start sounding all preachy again -- and I will -- please feel free to remind me to reread them once again.

Pink as the New Green

2008-11-24T17:05:55Z

The imagery in this news release caught my eye: "the amount of waste glass diverted from landfills could form a two-lane glass highway that extends 1.3 times around the world."

The news release came from Owens Corning, which produces "Pink" insulation and announced that it has boosted to 40 percent (an increase of five percent) the amount of "certified" recycled glass used in its insulation. It also says that the 5 percent increase maintains the company's lead in using the most recycled materials in insulation.

Another "factoid" from the company's release --manufacturing fiberglass with recycled glass requires significantly less energy -- made the release even more interesting. (Also interesting, but completely unrelated to the environment were two additional discoveries from the Owens Corning website: the company became the first to successfully trademark a color -- in this case PINK -- in 1987. Also one of my favorite giggle-worthy cartoon characters -- the Pink Panther -- became the corporate mascot in 1980.)

But what interests me the most about this news is that it points once again to the tremendous opportunity for recycling. Because of the use of recycled glass in its insulation, Owens Corning says that it is one of the largest users of recycled glass in the world and that it is having trouble finding enough to use.

To continue to help the market find additional sources of recycled glass, Owens Corning is leading initiatives with regional recyclers and processors to invest in technologies that will reduce the amount of glass sent to landfills, either because no local recycling programs exist or due to technical limitations in recycling different types and colors of glass. One such program involves Strategic Materials Inc., a Texas-based processor of scrap glass collected from a diverse range of sources including new curbside recycling programs. Once construction is completed, the glass the company will recycle at plants in Texas and Georgia will keep approximately 12,500 tons of glass per month from going to a landfill, and be reused in products including Owens Corning insulation.

That quote reminded me of a Newsweek article from early October -- Saving the World for a Latte -- that describes a program run by RecycleBank that is very much, as the authors wrote, to "a frequent-flier program for recyclers." The article continues:

Perhaps it's a commentary on the woes of Wall Street, but investors are seeing gold in garbage. With rising demand from markets like China and India, prices for scrap material like aluminum and paper have soared, which makes the economics of recycling more compelling than ever. That's why venture capitalists dumped a record $161 million into recycling firms last year, up from just $17 million in 2001, according to Cleantech Group, a green-investing consultant. And RecycleBank is one of the hottest plays, attracting $40 million from backers like Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, former American Express CEO James Robinson III and Coca-Cola.

Recycling has long been one of my major bugaboos. Every morning I watch as the tens of thousands of commuters at Penn Station toss newspapers into the trash (there's a lack of recycling bins throughout the station). And in the evenings, I watch those same commuters dump newspapers, bottles and cans into the garbage on the station platforms (where no recycling bins exist).

And I wonder: just how stupid can we be? And how long will it be before companies like Owens Corning and RecycleBank can save us from our lazy selves?

San Francisco to Detroit: Drop Dead?

2008-11-23T00:53:30Z

On the same day that congressional leaders threw in the towel on a bailout for the auto industry, three Bay Area mayors joined an innovative startup in backing a $1 billion plan to create the modern day Detroit.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the startup Better Place pledged to build the "re-charging infrastructure that must be in place before most consumers would consider buying or leasing an electric car."

The report continued:

Better Place, headed by former high-tech executive Shai Agassi, plans to install about 250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-exchange stations and a control center to service Bay Area electric car drivers. The goal is to have most of the system in place by 2012.

"We need to put together a new industry, and it needs to scale very fast," Agassi said at a press conference in San Francisco. He was flanked by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed as well as Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Perhaps the timing of the collapse of the talks in auto bailout Washington and the announcement from Better Place was simply a coincidence. Or perhaps the press conference with the three mayors was quickly pulled together as it became clear that the congressional talks were going to fail.

Either way, the message is pretty clear: Bay Area innovators are once again ascendant and what's left of the Big Three and a good portion of the Michigan economy is in the bullseye. Anyone willing to bet that Silicon Valley will miss? Not I.

Yes We Can

2008-11-05T14:54:03Z

I'm not much of a party guy so my husband, our laptops and assorted dogs spent last night sprawled around our family room watching the election returns. We'd often speak over the drone of the talking heads to blurt out an interesting statistic from some website or another or to remark on how the evening was going.

But when Barack Obama spoke around midnight, we quietly watched the Democratic candidate transformed into the President-elect of the United States. And when Obama began his "yes we can," I found myself silently chanting along.

I chanted not because NRDC had endorsed the President-elect. As a non-partisan organization, we cannot -- and do not -- endorse candidates for political office. Instead my "yes we can" was aimed primarily at the thought that we now would have the leadership necessary to meet our energy and climate challenges, at building a clean energy economy by manufacturing plug-in hybrid cars, growing dedicated fuel crops and developing clean power sources like wind, solar and geothermal.

I thought yes we can unleash American ingenuity and regain our national competitive edge in this global economy. I thought that yes we can find the solutions to what President-elect Obama called a "planet in peril."

We can do all this through responsible governing and smart planning and by encouraging our new leaders to express an inspiring vision of a better American economy based not on elaborate financial transactions but on the production of cutting edge technology and the delivery of high value services.

And finally, I thought yes we can because I remembered the mailing we received from Rep. Patrick Murphy, our local first-term member of Congress who won wide re-election last night. His mailing featured a huge picture of a wind turbine under construction at a former U.S. Steel site in nearby Fairless Hills in Bucks County, PA. "Quickly," Murphy writes, the abandoned factory "has become a green energy hub, supplying the area with jobs that were lost when U.S. Steel stopped manufacturing at the site."

Over the summer, when chants of "drill baby drill" echoed around the country, many environmentalists were near tears. Being a glass half full kind of guy, I tried to remind my colleagues (or anyone else that would listen) of the often soaring rhetoric we heard from politicians of both political parties about transforming our national infrastructre for the clean energy economy.

Last night, as I closed the laptop and headed off to bed, it felt absolutely wonderful to know that the voters had put into office those who spoke most passionately about seizing the energy and climate opportunities before us. And then I smiled and thought, yes, we can.

Oily, Day Two

2008-09-18T15:30:00Z

Day two and the feeling of being dunked in oil hasn't lifted. In fact, given the financial news rocking Wall Street and the soaring price of oil futures, I'm left feeling greasier than ever.

The latest reports from Washington find the Senate not sure what to do about the House energy bill and the many proposals rising on that side of the Capitol. And unlikely voices are getting louder. This morning's Washington Post has an opinion article from Henry Kissenger and Martin Feldstein:

"The tripling in the price of oil from $30 a barrel in 2001 to around $100 today represents the largest transfer of wealth in human history. The 13 OPEC members alone are expected to earn more than $1 trillion this year from oil sales. Inevitably, this will bring with it major political consequences. Not the least significant aspect of this political and economic earthquake is that it is being exacted upon the world's most powerful nations by some of the world's weakest. Yet the victims stand by impotently as if the price of oil were some natural event determined by a competitive economic market that is not and cannot be influenced by political forces."

In some ways, the solution is quite simple. We need to end our dependence on Big Oil, invest our petrodollars instead in rebuilding our infrastructure. The jobs -- blue, white and green -- that would be created could never been outsourced and would result in real American wealth, not the fantasy Monopoly money that much of Wall Street seemed to be built upon.

NRDC's new friend, Oily, is making his latest appearance on the website of Politico. This time, he's more animated about his message to Washington: Big oil corrupts our government, pollutes our oceans and beaches and leads to national insecurity.

The alternative: clean energy alternatives and efficiency. Tom Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded is an instant bible for those of us who believe we can do much economic good -- and reverse global warming -- by improving our energy policies. In the interestingly titled chapter, "If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Green," Friedman quotes Rick Duke, the Director of NRDC's new Center for Market Innovation.

"If we do enough to scale energy efficiency, the money we save would be enough to pay to clean up -- to decarbonize -- the remaining supply of electrons and fuels so we could power our economy in a way that is consistent with containing climate change," Duke says.

There's much more to explore on this topic and in Friedman's book. But as we await an awakening from our political leadership, I wonder what day three will bring.

Oily

2008-09-17T15:30:09Z

I woke up feeling more than a bit greasy this morning. It was almost as if I someone had snuck into my bedroom and dumped a barrel or two of oil on me. And my shower didn't help all that much.

Why? Last night, the House passed an energy bill that the Los Angeles Times termed a "stunning political turnabout ... aimed at rebutting Republican election-year attacks that the Democratic majority wasn't doing enough to try to ease the public's pain at the pump."

To be fair, there is much good in the House bill. Tax incentives for renewable energy and efficiency and a requirement that utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity by 2020 from cleaner sources, such as the sun and wind.

But the drilling provisions represent another huge giveaway to Big Oil, as NRDC says in an advertisement featuring our new friend "Oily" that are running this morning in the print version of Politico, Congress Daily AM and Congressional Quarterly Today. And they represent the culmination of a campaign designed to dupe the American public into believing that new domestic drilling will do anything to end spiraling energy prices.

The truth is that drilling offshore our coasts will only make things worse. Offshore rigs have a long history of oil spills and there's no guarantee that any oil found on our coasts will be funneled to Americans. We don't need to risk permanent damage to our beaches so the oil companies can make even more profit selling oil to China and India.

Increased drilling only prolongs our dependence on oil and will not lower gas prices. Instead of trying to drill our way out of this problem, we need to act now to become less dependent on oil.

We need to improve energy efficiency as well as invest in renewable energy and new energy technology. We need more choices for energy efficient cars, and ways to make our houses and offices more energy efficient. Where it will work, we need more choices for ways to get around, like buses and trains. We need to build our communities so people have more transportation choices.

Interestingly enough, the few paragraphs above represent not just NRDC policy. They are drawn from the words of voters -- moderates and those more liberal, low and moderate income, from representative communities in the midwest and east coast -- from focus groups in recent weeks.

These voters were quite angry and resigned to the fact that Washington seemed unable to break its addiction to oil.

They believed, as do I, that the American people are resourceful and innovative and that we can build a new energy economy and in the process create a new energy economy with good, well-paying jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.

Let's hope that yesterday's vote in the House marked a low point in the ongoing energy debate and that a new Congress and administration will finally begin to break our addiction to a finite resource that the world is consuming at a rapidly increasing rate.

For the real facts on energy policy and gas prices, see this collection of NRDC materials. They make for a good read, hopefully we can persuade more policy makers in Washington to give them at least a cursory review.

Substance Abuse and Promiscuity

2008-09-10T23:57:40Z

"Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length."

So wrote the Inspector General of the Department of Interior today in an eye-popping report decrying "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" in the Bush Administration program charged with collecting royalties from big oil. The language quoted above came at the end of a description of the misdeeds of a program called "Royalty in Kind" or RIK.

We also discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity in the RIK program both within the program, including a supervisor, Greg Smith, who engaged in illegal drug use and had sexual relations with subordinates, and in consort with industry. Internally, several staff admitted to illegal drug use as well as illicit sexual encounters. Alcohol abuse appears to have been a problem when RIK staff socialized with industry.

For example, two RIK staff accepted lodging from industry after industry events because they were too intoxicated to drive home or to their hotel. These same RIK marketers also engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts.

The investigation into more than a dozen employees of a unit called the Minerals Management Service was leading the websites of the New York Times and the Washington Post this afternoon. Neither newspaper missed the irony that the scandal is breaking as Congress prepares to vote on whether to open our coasts to oil and gas drilling, yet another potential huge giveaway to big oil pushed by an Administration that has been plagued for eight years by ethical scandals involving big oil.

I'm sure we'll hear more about this as the story develops, but this latest scandal should stop the push for drilling in its tracks. The reality is that oil is a limited resource and it will eventually run out.

We need Congress to adopt legislation to improve energy efficiency as well as invest in renewables and new energy technology. To do otherwise, would be to award the malfeasance documented today by the Inspector General report.