It looks like we’re on our own when it comes to being able to breathe the air or afford gasoline. And we can forget about pulling ourselves away from the Middle East oil tit, too. The $12 billion energy bill passed by Congress two weeks ago sure won’t help. Locally, this means Mecklenburg County needs to dramatically increase its air quality improvement efforts beyond their current “drop in the bucket” status.
The energy bill that crawled out of a House-Senate conference offered little actual new policy, but was bursting at the seams with money for the oil, coal, gas and nuclear power industries. These huge giveaways — which, after campaign contributors were “taken care of,” created a bill that cost twice what anyone foresaw just a month ago — deliver tax dollar plunder to the biggest pollution-producing energy industries, while throwing a few bones to renewable energy sources. In a breathtakingly cynical move that makes old-time wheeler-dealers like Tip O’Neill or Lyndon Johnson look like wimps, Republicans added a whopping $1.5 billion to the bill at the last possible second — so Democrats could not possibly derail it — for a natural gas related company in House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s homebase of Sugar Land, TX. Actually, the word “cynicism” doesn’t do justice to the process that went down in DC. Try “theft” instead.
Just in case the environment hasn’t been degraded enough, our wise national leaders also gave the energy industries exemptions to the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. And in another little-noticed disaster, they repealed PUHCA (the Public Utilities Holding Company Act), which means that every American utility company will now be at risk of catastrophic financial manipulation — energy policy Enron-style!
Don’t expect quick progress, at least in the US, in developing solar power and “green” building technology, either. Congress slashed in half the original $10 billion slated for those kinds of “tree-hugging” measures — which happen to be favored by 86 percent of Americans, according to an extensive recent survey by Yale University.
Who are the losers here? For starters, you and me and anyone else who might be interested in inhaling clean air, buying less gas, or beginning to reverse global warming so our kids won’t have to vacation in Fayetteville Beach in a couple of decades.
The US, at one time the world leader in new technologies, could be going full-tilt in developing renewable energy and tightening energy efficiency for our cars, buildings and even appliances. Instead, we continue to import 60 percent of the 20 million barrels of oil we guzzle every day while the world rapidly approaches the global peak of oil production. After it peaks, economists predict, the price of nearly everything will begin to rise at a rate that will essentially wreck the global economy. Meanwhile, air quality is so bad in Charlotte, children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with asthma are advised not to go outside an average of 24 days each summer, according to figures from the last seven years. Steve Weber, chair of the Mecklenburg County Air Quality Commission, wrote in the Observer last week that Charlotte could reach 50 of those “bad air” days this year.
And on top of all that, of course, global warming is doing some dangerously weird things to the weather.
The drastic nature of our predicament is so well-known, at least outside of the US Capitol and the White House, some cities and states have quit waiting for the federal government to wake up and have begun acting on their own.
In California, the legislature adopted a new ozone limit, giving it the nation’s most stringent air pollution standards. Gov. Schwarzenegger has promoted the installation of hydrogen fueling stations to encourage the use of non-polluting cars, and has championed a “million solar roofs” program to subsidize installation of solar power in homes. The state has also recently placed emissions restrictions on its dairies, which they say cause more pollution in the San Joaquin valley than automobiles.
Twelve states including California, as well as the cities of Baltimore, New York and Washington, DC, joined environmental groups to petition the EPA to impose new controls on carbon dioxide and other automobile pollutants that contribute to global warming. The EPA, guided by Bush administration pro-industry policies, rejected the petition, so the states took them to court. Two weeks ago, rather than face another round of appeals, the EPA finally agreed to propose new ways to reduce toxic emissions from cars.
Sadly, it almost goes without saying that neither North nor South Carolina, much less Charlotte, were involved in the lawsuit — despite the fact that our city’s air is some of the worst in the nation and has been documented as such for years.
So, what are local leaders doing about air quality in Mecklenburg County? In short, precious little, although there has been some progress — not much, but some. Next week, I’ll look at local efforts to improve air quality in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, as well as new measures other cities and states are taking, now that Congress has made it clear we’re all on our own.
This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2005.
