Tuesday, 30 Jan 2001

Year of the Snake Oil Salesman

President Bush said yesterday that he was "deeply concerned" that the energy crisis in California was "spreading beyond the California borders." The thing to do about it, he said, was to make it far easier for companies to drill for oil and gas and to build new power plants. "And a good place to look is going to be ANWR," Bush said, referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. He said he would push for legislation to open the refuge to drilling and consider granting waivers to states to allow older coal-powered power plants to operate even if they violated clean air standards. (Note: Gov. Gray Davis (D) of crisis-stricken California has said that his state can resolve its problem without significant waivers, but other states have long sought such exemptions.) Bush named Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of oil services company Halliburton, to head a task force that would study ways to boost oil drilling and energy production.

A Day in the Life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Russia's environmental resources are being "plundered" and the current government has only made the problem worse, says Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the 81-year-old Nobel Prize winner. In a newspaper column last week, the writer criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for abolishing the country's environmental protection and forestry agencies and shifting their responsibilities to the extraction-happy Natural Resources Ministry. Enviros are also protesting a plan that came to light last week that would let Japan ship radioactive waste from Europe to Japan through Russia's northern seas.

Never Say Nader Again?

Ralph Nader is getting the cold shoulder from Democrats on Capitol Hill, and some liberal activists have stopped contributing to the groups he founded. For example, Joan Claybrook, president of the Nader group Public Citizen, said that members of Congress were refusing to work with her group. Polls have shown that about half of the people who voted for Nader in presidential race would have voted for Al Gore had Nader not run, while only 20 percent would have voted for Bush. That means that Nader might have cost Gore the states of New Hampshire and Florida -- and the presidency. Nader has asked Marcus Raskin of the Institute for Policy Studies, an anti-globalization think tank, to try to make peace with Democrats, enviros, and other lefties.

Reef It Alone

Australian Environment Minister Robert Hill put oil exploration in the Great Barrier Reef on hold this week, citing concerns that the testing might harm whales. Geologic exploration company TGS NOPEC had plans to conduct seismic testing some 30 miles from the reef, part of which is a U.N. World Heritage Site and breeding area for humpback whales. Hill has asked the state of Queensland to complete an environmental assessment of the project to help determine whether oil exploration should continue.