Energy & Environment

With the presidential and congressional races approaching full swing, the American people are being bombarded with one campaign slogan after another. The problem is that peppering voters with clever catchphrases in stump speeches and television ads does nothing to secure America’s energy or economic future.

With outrageous gasoline prices being matched only by the nation’s troubling unemployment rate, it is time for Republicans and Democrats to dispense with the political jockeying and get serious about an energy policy that can improve the lives of all American families.

The good news is that there is plenty of common ground on which to build a principled compromise.

Thanks to weak enemies and economic austerity, the U.S. nuclear triad—the ability to deliver nuclear weapons with land and submarine based ballistic missiles and bomber aircraft— is getting wobbly. As Congress struggles to squeeze the defense budget under self-imposed caps, it should embrace proposals, like the one just offered by the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright, to scrap either the bomber leg or land missile leg of triad and reduce the others’ size. That would save billions annually without sacrificing security.

The triad grew from bureaucratic compromise, not strategic necessity. After World War II, nukes seemed like the weapon of the future. The Air Force saw their delivery as part of the strategic bombing mission that had just given their service independence. Their ownership of that mission, and eventually land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, won them budget share at the expense of other services. The Navy, eager to avoid a becoming something like a transoceanic bus service, found an ingenious way to get into the nuclear game: they put missiles on submarines.

There are few things that have real bipartisan consensus in Congress nowadays. So, when both parties agree to cancel a billion dollar boondoggle, it is clear that there was something very wrong with the project.

This past month, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees agreed with the Pentagon’s and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) decision to cancel a $6 billion plutonium laboratory in New Mexico—the  Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Despite this consensus, one member of Congress is leading the charge to put money for  the CMRR-NF back into the budget.

Here we are again: at the mercy of a foreign government for a natural resource essential to our economic and national security. President Obama’s recent announcement that the United States plans to file a case with the World Trade Organization against China’s export restrictions on rare earth minerals highlights the under-reported fact that our nation’s reliance on foreign minerals is even more pronounced than our dependence on foreign oil.

Indeed, in 2009, the United States imported oil or oil products from 90 different countries all around the world. By comparison with rare earth elements, the U.S. relies almost exclusively on one supplier and there is no other country to turn to should China decide to withdraw them from the market. Once the world’s primary producer of rare earths, the United States is now completely reliant on imports for the minerals, with 91 percent of our supply coming from China. The Pentagon reports that that rare earths—found in night vision equipment, satellites and other defense technologies—are vital to sustaining and building U.S. military efforts. Beyond that, they’re used every day in petroleum refining, in green energy technologies like wind turbines and hybrid cars and in the production of medical technologies.

As constituents living in Congressman David McKinley's district, we'd like to make ourselves clear: jobs are important, and Congress needs to do all it can to help Americans get back to work. However, the need for jobs does not mean that power companies should put arsenic and other toxins from coal ash and scrubber sludge into our rivers, streams, and drinking water supplies. Polluters that donate to politicians’ campaigns should not get a free pass to pollute; and the Transportation Bill should be about creating American jobs, not poisoning American communities.
 
Congressman McKinley made grossly misinformed claims in his article that appeared in The Hill on May 7.  Mr. McKinley needs to check his facts: his amendment does not set federal minimum safeguards for coal ash and even worse, it would forever prohibit the EPA from ever providing such protections – even if the threat to public health increases.

We are long-time residents of West Virginia who want something done to clean up coal ash dumps, not an industry bill that would keep the EPA from even investigating our complaints.

In a statement late last week, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) criticized Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for his efforts to strengthen the Department of Defense through clean, alternative sources of energy. As a Republican, a State Senator, and United States Marine, I couldn’t disagree more.

Secretary Panetta joins our nation’s military and security leaders in understanding the clear connection between our energy policy and our national security. We send a billion dollars a day overseas for oil, much of that to unfriendly nations who do not share our values. America’s addiction to oil helps buy the very bullets that are shot back at our troops on the front lines.



And the Department of Defense is already feeling the impact of climate change at home and abroad. The DoD calls climate change an “accelerant of instability or conflict,” meaning it takes a bad situation and makes it worse. Drought, famine, rising sea levels, and more frequent and devastating natural disasters pose a threat to military installations and raise demand for military assistance.

As we approach the peak driving months of summer, gasoline prices are nearly $4 a gallon – double the cost when President Obama took office. It’s no coincidence that American workers and families are still struggling through the weakest economic recovery and highest sustained joblessness since the Great Depression. High energy costs are keeping our country in the economic doldrums.
 
The president likes to remind us that he doesn’t control the price of gasoline. He blames the Japanese earthquake, Middle East unrest, and conspiracies by wily speculators and greedy oil companies. The American people don’t expect their President to halt earthquakes. They simply ask that he try to protect our families and businesses from price spikes and supply disruptions with the opportunities he does have. Unfortunately, the president is unwilling to do so.

Today our nation faces an economic climate in which our national debt is headed toward a record $17 trillion dollars. If we continue on this path, America will meet the fate countries like Greece, Italy and Portugal are now facing.

Let’s put this into terms to which we all can relate:  $17 trillion is a debt that exceeds all the worth of our country’s production. If our government’s spending were like that of a family, the collection calls and overdue bills would have long ago caused families to cut spending. The country’s financial woes are severe and we don’t need to make it worse.

Consequently, the last thing we need is to add hundreds of thousands of workers to the unemployment lines and an increase in road, bridge and infrastructure costs. That’s what is being predicted to happen if coal ash is designated as a hazardous material by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

At this moment, thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars are on the line. The United States’ offshore wind sector has the potential to employ tens of thousands of workers. But if some lawmakers have their way – blocking implementation of the National Ocean Policy – it would hamper the ability to fulfill the tremendous potential that offshore wind energy has for our country.
 
Deepwater Wind is working to develop this new and sustainable ocean use by building utility-scale offshore wind projects in the Northeast, delivering clean, renewable energy at cost-effective prices.  Building these projects creates not just clean power for markets that need it, but also a new marine industry and jobs for an entire region.

The United States military is the single largest purchaser of petroleum fuel in the world, burning through about 325,000 barrels of fuel per day. Almost all of that fuel is derived from oil. This is important not because of the vast carbon footprint (or boot print) that the military has – a separate, and important problem. It is actually the dependence on oil that presents the military with a long-term strategic risk.
 
Although today the military is able to buy fuel for operations anywhere around the world, access to oil is not guaranteed in the future. Finite global reserves of oil means that some time in the future, oil may become physically more difficult to acquire, no matter the price. Related to that risk, the military, like all consumers in the U.S., relies on oil from countries that do not align with our interests. This affects our foreign policy and undermines our national security. It also means that, in a shooting war, when our fighting men and women need access to fuel to effectively fight, we may not be able to guarantee access to the fuel we need. We can no longer afford totake it as a given that oil will always be available.