The Energy Bill

The massive energy bill that Congress and the Bush Administration has debated for three years likely will be the first major piece of environmental legislation voted by Congress in 2004. Even then, the vote is not expected until after the February recess for President’s Day.

In the summer of 2001, the Bush Administration announced it wanted: major new tax breaks for the oil, gas, and coal industry; to open environmentally sensitive areas (including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) to oil and gas drilling; to greatly expand the number of coal and nuclear power plants; and to oppose any significant increase in the automobile fuel economy standards (CAFE). Two years later, there was still no comprehensive energy bill that had passed Congress.

The House passed the energy bill, but in the Senate, the Republican leadership could not muster the votes to stop a filibuster by a majority of Democrats and a few Republicans. Democrats were upset that the bill was negotiated in backrooms – away from the normal give and take in legislative committees. Some Republicans were concerned with the financial and environmental costs of the huge bill. Republican stewards of the bill had hoped that putting in large ethanol subsides would get Democrats to vote for it. Some Midwest Democrats did vote for the bill—in order for their states to receive massive ethanol subsidies—but their votes were not enough to break the filibuster.

The entire bill may have to be rewritten or broken into smaller pieces. Many of the compromises made between House and Senate Republicans were damaging to the environment. In order to give the Senate ethanol subsidies, the House insisted on $10.5 billion in subsidies for the oil and gas companies and a removal of legal liability for the producers of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). This gasoline additive was once used to reduce smog, but is now banned because it was found to be a major groundwater pollutant. Rep. Delay (R-TX) refused to remove the MTBE waiver even after a personal request from President Bush. A bill that subsidizes major polluters and exempts them from lawsuits, even if they know the dangers of the chemicals they produce, should not be passed. The relatively minor tax breaks for renewable energy cannot make the bill environmentally benign.

The best hope for the environment would be if the bill were broken into manageable parts. Sen. Jeffords (I-VT) has introduced S 1754 to address electricity grid reliability. Some Members think that a renewable energy bill could pass on its own.

In 1998, the PC(USA) General Assembly urged all nations to promote energy conservation and renewable energy. In 1990, the GA urged the United States government to act promptly to strengthen fuel economy and car emissions standards. The comprehensive energy plan developed by the Congress does little to meet these goals. It would be better for the health of God’s creation if no comprehensive bill were to pass in 2004, if it is like the 2003 House bill.

Clean Air

Sometimes a good name is attached to bad legislation. Such a Trojan horse is Mr. Bush’s “Clear Skies” legislation. First introduced in 2002, it purports to help clean up the nation’s skies, but would actually roll back important environmental protections by exempting many of the most polluting power plants from Clean Air Act requirements. The House and Senate sponsors, Rep. Barton (R-TX) and Sen. Inhofe (R-OK), have made the proposal worse by increasing the allowable mercury pollution from 26 tons to 34 tons annually. Mercury is an extremely toxic substance to both the environment and growing children. Most mercury pollution comes from power plants burning coal that contains mercury.

The Barton/Inhofe bills (HR 999 and S 485) mirror the Bush Administration proposal in failing to include carbon dioxide, the major global warming gas, as a pollutant. Instead, the Administration has proposed a voluntary program to reduce global warming gases by 18 percent by 2012. This is far less than the voluntary program supported by the first President Bush in 1992.

The legislation fails to accomplish any of the goals of the 2002 General Assembly policy on clean air. The GA called on Presbyterians to “resist efforts to abolish or undercut established clean air programs:” to work to “enact clean air laws that will substantially reduce pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, respiratory disease, mercury contamination, and global warming;” and to “end the ‘grandfather’ loophole” that allows old dirty power plants to expand without meeting the standards of the Clean Air Act. The “Clear Skies” bills oppose all of these recommendations. Fortunately, better bills have been offered.

Sen. Jeffords (I-VT) left the GOP in part because he felt it had abandoned the environmentalism of its past. He has introduced a version of his “Four Pollutants” bill that passed the Senate Environment and Public Works committee in 2002. S 366 would control four pollutants, including carbon dioxide. It puts control of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides (all major causes of smog and acid rain) and mercury on a tighter clean up schedule than the Barton/Inhofe legislation.

Unfortunately, Sen. Jeffords no longer chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee; Sen. Inhofe does. The Chair of the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear Safety, Sen. Voinovich (R-OH), generally allies himself with Inhofe, so one can assume that he will use Sen. Inhofe’s bill as the “mark-up” vehicle. Even if the full Environment Committee votes for the bill, it is unlikely that it will pass the Senate in a presidential election year. Moreover, most major overhauls of environmental laws require strong bipartisan support. At present the Barton/Inhofe “Clear Skies” bill is one Trojan horse that God’s Creation can do without.

Clean Water

A little more than 30 years ago, rivers in the United States were awash in raw sewage and toxic pollution. In Ohio, the Cuyahoga River even caught fire. In the 1960s and '70s, many beaches were strewn with black sludge, dead fish, and the waste that cities had dumped at sea. The Clean Water Act changed much of that. Today, more than half of the waters in the United States are safe for swimming and fishing.

While the old kinds of pollution still threaten our waters, a new invisible threat looms. New chemicals and increasing levels of unregulated pollutants threaten both environmental and human health. Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants wash into streams and lakes. Public agencies are warning us to not eat too much fish from local waters, or not at all if you are a child or pregnant woman. Factory farms of beef, chicken, and hogs fill “lagoons” (waste troughs) and spew disease-laden waste into streams. Crytosporidium microorganisms from livestock contaminated the Milwaukee, Wisconsin drinking water system and resulted in the deaths of more than 100 persons. Other systems—like that of Washington, D.C.— have been contaminated. Suburban development has forced communities with small treatment facilities to dump untreated sewage into waterways. Aging sewer systems in our older cities likewise can’t keep up with the waste stream and dump their sewage into nearby waterways.

Against these threats, lobbyists from factory farms, mining, oil, and other big polluters are trying to convince the EPA that the Clean Water Act is unnecessary and should not be strengthened to handle new challenges. The White House proposed a new rule under the Clean Water Act that would roll back protections from millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of miles of streams. In November 2003, 218 House Members (a solid majority) wrote the President, urging him to abandon this rule. This roll back of safety regulations would have bypassed Congress, threatened drinking water supplies, left mercury pollution uncontrolled along with other toxins, and destroyed thousands of acres of sensitive wildlife habitat. On December 16, 2003, the EPA announced that it would not go forward with the proposal to reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act.

The work of the Clean Water Act is far from done. The Act’s goals of protecting all waters in the United States, working toward “zero-discharge” of pollutants, and to make all waters fishable, drinkable, and swimmable have not been achieved. Nearly half of United States waterways do not meet clean water standards. Wetlands are disappearing at a rate of 100,000 acres a year. The largest estuary in the nation—The Chesapeake Bay—is rated by the EPA to be in only fair or poor condition.

The goal of cleaning up all the nation’s waters is still being challenged by the White House. President Bush wants to limit clean water protections. His advice to agencies that accompanied the rulemaking proposals by itself removes 20 percent of the nation’s waters from Clean Water Act protections. A bipartisan group of Members—who support the Clean Water Act—worked promptly to block the proposed rollback of the Clean Water Act. But the Administration still has not rescinded its advice to agencies regarding the scope of the Clean Water Act. Action may be needed by Congress to rescind the policy guidance to federal agencies and restore the full protections of the Clean Water Act.

Written by Jaydee Hanson, a consultant on environmental and biotechnology issues and their relationship to faith.