Senate Energy Bill Threatens U. S. Economic and National Security; Nuclear Power not the Answer Either, Cleanpeace Says
The Senate Energy Bill speeds up oil depletion and makes America more dependent on OPEC oil, according to Cleanpeace. The bill fails to level the playing field between depletable fossil and radioactive energy and abundant, undeletable, energy including solar, wind, wave and biomass. Hydrogen made from undepletable energy resources can efficiently fuel existing gasoline and diesel engines and begin replacing oil now, when it counts. Its easy access to transportation engines opens this giant market to all undepletable energy resources via hydrogen. Use of hydrogen as an engines fuel begins reversing global warming, cleans the air and water and slows the danerous advance of Peak oil. Oil Company windfall profits drive a policy that endangerous America and its freedoms. Cleanpeace urges defeat of Congress's energy bill unless all subsidies, tax breaks and policy advantages avaialble to fossil and radioactive energy are made available to energy form undepletable reosurces.
Bridgeport, CT (PRWEB) June 30, 2005 -- The energy bill that passed the U. S.
Senate today and the bill passed by the U S House of Representatives last April
hasten the threat to America’s economic and national security. Both energy bills
fail to provide a practical path for achievement of American energy independence
according to Cleanpeace, a non-profit advocacy group.
“When it comes to
dependence on oil, more production means less oil. The more oil taken from the
ground today, the less domestic oil left, the slower the rate of its extraction
and the greater America’s dependence on imported oil and Middle East OPEC
dictators.” said Bill Garrett, Co-President of Cleanpeace.
The world
burns six barrels of oil for each one discovered and new oil discoveries tend to
be increasingly difficult, expensive, and slow to extract while world prosperity
and America’s national security demand increased supplies of inexpensive energy.
Congress’s new energy legislation focuses on subsidizing more rapid
depletion of domestic oil, other fossil fuels and a proliferation of radioactive
power plants. It fails to adequately provide resources, policies, and most
important of all, a level playing field on which to exploit America’s abundant,
but underdeveloped, undepletable energy including direct solar, wind, wave and
biomass wastes.
“These energy resources are ultimately far more abundant
than fossil and radioactive fuels. Every day the Earth receives more solar
energy than all the fossil fuels ever deposited on the continents and the
technology to exploit it is available now,” said Roy McAlister, Co-President of
Cleanpeace and President of the American Hydrogen
Association.
Accelerating depletion of America’s oil reserves puts
America’s national security in peril and could make us subservient to the will
of the OPEC dictators and the Middle East radicals who influence
them.
The abundant energy available from domestic undepletable resources
could begin replacing oil near term, when its needed, and rapidly develop into
the primary fuel of America if allowed to compete on a level playing field with
fossil and radioactive fuels.
Hydrogen can be cleanly and efficiently
burned in existing, ordinary gasoline and diesel engines and it can be made from
most all undepletable resources including direct solar, wind, wave and biomass
wastes. Via hydrogen, these undepletable resources can begin powering the
transportation sector and, as infrastructure is built, can become the primary
replacement fuel for oil, said Garrett.
The need to replace oil is
urgent. At best, America has less than 3% of world oil reserves, OPEC controls
61%. China and India aggressively compete with the U. S. for world oil reserves
to power their rapid economic growth.
U. S. prosperity depends on
consuming 26% of world oil production and America imports 60% of the 21 million
barrels of oil we use each day. Depleting America’s comparatively meager U.S.
reserves is enormously profitable for oil companies but very dangerous for U.S.
economy and security.
“The energy message from Congress to the world
should have been that America’s energy bill committed the nation to an emergency
program on par with America’s best wartime efforts to achieve ENERGY
INDEPENDENCE by rapid development of abundant wind, solar, wave, falling water,
and biomass resources.”, Said McAlister.
The unburnished truth is that
adequate reserves of inexpensive oil are an endangered species with no hope of
regeneration.
The energy bill should have put OPEC’s oil markets clearly
in the competitive sights of America’s independent energy scientists; inventors
and entrepreneurs, the Thomas Edisons, the Wright brothers, and the Bill Gateses
of the energy movement. It should have been a declaration of America’s energy
independence backed by a policy that allows undepletable energy to compete with
oil now on a level playing field.
Heavy oil and oil from shale rocks and
sands won’t fill the oil gap. Strip mining, steaming or chemically coaxing oil
out of rocks or sand can not match the gushing extraction rates of the cheap oil
that powers the world now.
The radioactive fuels so heavily subsidized in
Congress’s new energy bill are not an answer either. It would take over Two
Thousand mammoth, one gigawatt nuclear plants to produce enough hydrogen to
replace oil in the transportation sector alone. They’d be more like corner
stores than remote power sources. Imagine the radio active wastes and the dirty
bombs that could be produced from it, said Garrett.
Radioactive energy is
not feasible without heavy government subsidies, insurance limitations, tax
breaks, purchase guarantees, taxpayer supported waste storage and other
government benefits. Oil would cost well over $5.00 a gallon without government
subsidies, and tax breaks. At that price undepletable energy could compete
favorably with oil. Equal subsidies and tax benefits would make them competitive
now.
Hydrogen burns clean emitting only water. Making it the primary
replacement fuel for oil would clean the air and water, begin reversing global
warming and lessen world tensions over competition for oil.
The
International Energy Administration estimates the cost of providing adequate
supplies of energy from fossil and radioactive fuels from now until 2030 is
$3Three Trillion. The cost of a complete hydrogen infrastructure is estimated at
$600 Hundred billion.
The technology to make undepletable fuels
competitive in oil markets is here, the abundant, undepletable domestic energy
resources are here. All that’s missing is the will of Congress to create a level
playing field for undepletable energy, said Garrett.
Cleanpeace urges
defeat of the energy bill unless it is amended to provide a level playing
between depletable and undepletable energy. America’s future depends on
it.
Contacts:
Bill Garrett: 203-372-6166
Roy McAlister:
620-474-1156
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb256555.htm