US Senate's new energy bill: Is it the answer?

No

1 of 2

by W Thomas Payne

Write now Print Invite a writer™ Add to Favorites RSS Feed Contact this writer

The Senate's "new" energy bill is just more of the same, without any real effort to put an end to the dependence of the human race on using combustion for its energy needs. Are we still cavemen building a fire? Instead, it is a "feel good" measure, aimed by the Democrats at President Bush's head in an attempt to gather ammo for the 2008 presidential election.

If the Senate, or the House, wanted a true energy bill, they would start by liberally funding alternative energy development put squarely on the backs of those who are being enriched by oil dependence. They would fund extravagantly research in the areas of solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal generators.

They would wipe out the objections to "view destruction" of their liberal brethren in Massachusetts as an EPA concern. They would remove from consideration the esthetics of these new technologies. They would put $200 billion a year into these technologies and in refining these technologies, instead of the paltry sums being invested today, while blowing our collective wad on a war in Iraq.

Oh, the bill does have some merit, I suppose. Removing subsidies for companies that are recording record profits every quarter makes an incredible amount of sense, as a taxpayer. Those companies should be sinking their billions of dollars in oil profits into energy research, but instead, their executives and shareholders (BushCo, again) grow ever richer. So, let's tax them and do it as a society, instead.

Tax the hell out the gas-guzzlers in their SUVs that have not once hauled a load or left the road, but are instead meant as a weapon of road destruction on those of us who choose to burn half as much fuel as they do in an attempt at frugality and good sense. The only element of safety with those vehicles is that they can squash the typical passenger car when they collide with each other, they are just as likely to injure or kill the passengers. Create a two-tier gasoline tax one for those whose vehicles meet CAFE standards, and double that amount for those drivers hell bent on poisoning the Earth.

They would call for hearings on the treasonous language of All Gore, and tell him to back the hell off on the U.S. as the primary enemy of the environment. China would be exempt from the Kyoto Protocols, as would India, and their emissions of greenhouse gases will soon exceed those of the U.S.

This is a war, folks not a feel good, let's do something for the environment moment. We are giving the people who want to kill us, and any free-thinking society, the money to do so. THAT must come to an end.

Learn more about this author, W Thomas Payne.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.