State of Alabama secondary Archives: on Energy & Oil

Dick Cheney: 2000: Energy Task Force studied Iraqi oilfield maps

We know that one of the documents that was receiving scrutiny by the task force during that same time period was a highly detailed map of Iraq--showing none of the cities, none of the places where people lived, but showing in great detail the location of every single oil deposit known to exist in the country, with dotted lines demarcating blocks for promising exploration.

George W. Bush: OpEd: Melded energy policy with Iraq policy

We know that one of the documents that was receiving scrutiny by the Energy Task Force in 2001 was a highly detailed map of Iraq--showing none of the cities, none of the places where people lived, but showing in great detail the location of every single oil deposit known to exist in the country, with dotted lines demarcating blocks for promising exploration.

In 2001, Bush melded the national energy policy with his foreign policy toward rogue states like Iraq. One of the few facilities in the entire country that was secured by US troops following the invasion was Iraq's oil ministry. Moreover, in 2007, the Iraqi government enacted legislation that was written in Washington to give US and British oil companies the dominant role in exploiting the massive oil reserves of Iraq.

Alan Schlesinger: Energy Bill had 3-mile LNG platform in Long Island Sound

LAMONT: Dick Cheney invited 100 of his favorite energy CEOs and lobbyists behind closed doors, and they passed the Energy Bill. It provided billions of dollars in subsidies to Exxon-Mobil. Sen. Lieberman was one of the only New England Senators to sign onto that bill. It was a bad bill.

SCHLESINGER: I can’t believe this, Ned, I finally agree with you on something. But I would have voted against that bill for entirely different reasons, because it would have developed a 3-mile platform in the middle of Long Island Sound as a fuel depot for natural gas. We can’t have it, and that vetoed the bill for me.

LIEBERMAN: The Energy Bill last year was criticized for one part. But it has the most substantial incentives for energy conservation and alternative energy that Congress has ever adopted.

LAMONT: For Sen. Lieberman to sign onto that bill, we lost that opportunity to put in efficiency standards, and to put together a comprehensive energy plan.

Alan Schlesinger: Suspend the gas tax during the driving months

Alan Schlesinger: 1980s Excess Profits Tax caused skyrocketing oil prices

LIEBERMAN: This is an outrage. People are being cheated. Last December, in the midst of the heating oil season, I submitted legislation that would impose a 50% Excess Profits Tax on oil companies for really undeserved profits and return that money to low- and middle-income consumers to help them pay bills.

SCHLESINGER: With all due respect, Joe, been there, done that. The last time we did, interest rates was to 14%, you couldn’t get a mortgage, oil prices skyrocketed, and it just didn’t work. Pres. Reagan repealed that Excess Profits Tax, and immediately oil prices fell to a 20-year low, and stayed therefore about 20 years. So that’s not the solution.

LAMONT: Front and center to deal with energy prices is that we’ve got to deal with our dependence on oil, with incentives and conservation to allow that to happen.

Alan Schlesinger: Declaration of Energy Independence: 2-tiered oil profit tax

LIEBERMAN: In the long run we’ve got to break our dependence on foreign oil from countries that are unstable or hostile to us. I’m now co-sponsoring a bill called Set America Free, which will reduce our consumption of oil by 10 million barrels a day. It would develop an American biofuels refinery and distribution network.

SCHLESINGER: We have to accept the fact that we’re moving from fossil fuel to eventually solar, we’re in a probably 30 or 40 year transition process. We have to put incentives into alternative fuel sources. I call it my Declaration of Energy Independence. And we have a two-tiered process for oil company profits: One for fossil fuels, which is a higher tax, and one for alternatives. That way you direct the funds where they’re needed and you get results.

LIEBERMAN: There’s been no greater failure of leadership in our government over the last 30 years than our failure to do something about our dependence on foreign oil

Joseph Lieberman: 50% Excess Profits Tax on oil companies’ undeserved profit

LIEBERMAN: This is an outrage. People are being cheated. Last December, in the midst of the heating oil season, I submitted legislation that would impose a 50% Excess Profits Tax on oil companies for really undeserved profits and return that money to low- and middle-income consumers to help them pay bills.

SCHLESINGER: With all due respect, Joe, been there, done that. The last time we did, interest rates was to 14%, you couldn’t get a mortgage, oil prices skyrocketed, and it just didn’t work. Pres. Reagan repealed that Excess Profits Tax, and immediately oil prices fell to a 20-year low, and stayed therefore about 20 years. So that’s not the solution.

LAMONT: Front and center to deal with energy prices is that we’ve got to deal with our dependence on oil, with incentives and conservation to allow that to happen.

Joseph Lieberman: Set America Free Act: reduce oil from unstable countries

LIEBERMAN: In the long run we’ve got to break our dependence on foreign oil from countries that are unstable or hostile to us. I’m now co-sponsoring a bill called Set America Free, which will reduce our consumption of oil by 10 million barrels a day. It would develop an American biofuels refinery and distribution network.

SCHLESINGER: We have to accept the fact that we’re moving from fossil fuel to eventually solar, we’re in a probably 30 or 40 year transition process. We have to put incentives into alternative fuel sources. I call it my Declaration of Energy Independence. And we have a two-tiered process for oil company profits: One for fossil fuels, which is a higher tax, and one for alternatives. That way you direct the funds where they’re needed and you get results.

LIEBERMAN: There’s been no greater failure of leadership in our government over the last 30 years than our failure to do something about our dependence on foreign oil

Joseph Lieberman: Energy Bill included incentives for conservation

LAMONT: Dick Cheney invited 100 of his favorite energy CEOs and lobbyists behind closed doors, and they passed the Energy Bill. It provided billions of dollars in subsidies to Exxon-Mobil. Sen. Lieberman was one of the only New England Senators to sign onto that bill. It was a bad bill.

SCHLESINGER: I can’t believe this, Ned, I finally agree with you on something. But I would have voted against that bill for entirely different reasons, because it would have developed a 3-mile platform in the middle of Long Island Sound as a fuel depot for natural gas. We can’t have it, and that vetoed the bill for me.

LIEBERMAN: The Energy Bill last year was criticized for one part. But it has the most substantial incentives for energy conservation and alternative energy that Congress has ever adopted.

LAMONT: For Sen. Lieberman to sign onto that bill, we lost that opportunity to put in efficiency standards, and to put together a comprehensive energy plan.

Ned Lamont: Cheney Energy Bill lost chance for comprehensive energy plan

LIEBERMAN: The Energy Bill has the most substantial incentives for energy conservation and alternative energy that Congress has ever adopted.

LAMONT: The real problem with that energy bill was along with production incentives, that was the time to put efficiency standards, to put together a comprehensive energy plan that would have meant real energy independence. For Sen. Lieberman to sign onto that bill we lost that opportunity.

Ned Lamont: Focus on incentives & conservation to reduce oil dependence

LIEBERMAN: This is an outrage. People are being cheated. Last December, in the midst of the heating oil season, I submitted legislation that would impose a 50% Excess Profits Tax on oil companies for really undeserved profits and return that money to low- and middle-income consumers to help them pay bills.

SCHLESINGER: With all due respect, Joe, been there, done that. The last time we did, interest rates was to 14%, you couldn’t get a mortgage, oil prices skyrocketed, and it just didn’t work. Pres. Reagan repealed that Excess Profits Tax, and immediately oil prices fell to a 20-year low, and stayed therefore about 20 years. So that’s not the solution.

LAMONT: Front and center to deal with energy prices is that we’ve got to deal with our dependence on oil, with incentives and conservation to allow that to happen.

Al Gore: Skeptics point to historical warming--but today is hotter

Nevertheless, the so-called global warming skeptics often say that global warming is really an illusion reflecting nature’s cyclical fluctuations. To support their view, they frequently refer to the Medieval Warm Period. But as [the historical] thermometer shows, the vaunted Medieval Warm Period was tiny compared to the enormous increases in temperature of the last half-century.

In any given year, it might seem as if the average global temperature is going down, but the overall trend is very clear. And in recent years, the rate of increase has been accelerating. In fact, if you look at the 21 hottest years measured, 20 of the last 21 occurred within the last 25 years. The hottest year on record during this entire period was 2005.

Al Gore: Ocean warming causes stronger hurricanes, like Katrina

As the oceans get warmer, storms get stronger. In 2004, Florida was hit by 4 unusually powerful hurricanes. That same year, Japan set an all-time record for typhoons. The previous record was 7. In 2004, 10 typhoons hit Japan.

The emerging consensus links global warming to increasingly destructive power of hurricanes, increasing the strength of the average hurricane a full half-step on the well-known 5-step scale. As water temperatures go up, wind velocity goes up. One major study came out less than a month before Hurricane Katrina hit.

When Katrina first hit, it was only a category 1 storm. Then, it passed over the unusually warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico [and became category 5].

Al Gore: Global warming causes more floods & also more droughts

Recently, for example, there were huge floods in Sichuan and Shandong provinces. Paradoxically, however, global warming also causes not only more flooding, but also more drought. The nearby Anhui province was continuing to suffer a severe drought at the same time the neighboring areas were flooding.

One of the reasons for this paradox has to do with the fact that global warming not only increases precipitation worldwide but at the same time causes some of it to relocate.

A second reason for the paradoxical effect of global warming is that while it produces more evaporation from the oceans to fill the warmer atmosphere with increased moisture, it also sucks more moisture out of the soil. Partly as a consequence, desertification has been increasing in the world decade by decade.

Al Gore: Supported ethanol in 1970s & cellulosic ethanol now

Al Gore: Arctic ice is melting & may disrupt global weather patterns

The melting of the ice cap represents bad news for creatures like polar bears. A new study shows that for the first time, polar bears have been drowning in significant numbers.

What does it mean to look at a vast expanse of water that used to be ice? We ought to care about this because it has serious planetary effects. An increase of 5 degrees actually means an increase of only 1 or 2 degrees at the Equator, but more than 12 degrees at the North Pole. And so all those wind and ocean patterns that formed during the last ice age, are now up in the air.

Our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this.

Al Gore: Carbon exchange market can cap-and-trade CO2 like we did SO2

A similar approach can speed up the reduction of CO2 emissions. The European Union has adopted this US innovation and is making it work effectively. Here at home, while Congress has not yet passed a federal cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions, there is an effective private-sector carbon market that is already up and running--the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).

The CCX is leading the way toward a future in which reducing CO2 could bring not only environmental rewards, but financial ones too.

Al Gore: Consensus on global warming, but newspapers fabricate doubt

There is a misconception that the scientific community is in a state of disagreement about global warming. In fact, there is virtually no serious disagreement on the central points.

The misconception of disagreement is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by oil & coal companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans that rely on the massive unrestrained dumping of CO2 into the Earth atmosphere every day.

Al Gore: Current tech can reduce CO2 emissions to 1970 levels

• Reduction from more efficient use of electricity in heating and cooling systems, lighting, appliances and electronic equipment.
• Reduction from end-use efficiency, meaning we design buildings and businesses to use far less energy.
• Reduction from increased vehicle efficiency by manufacturing cars that run on less gas and putting more hybrid and fuel-cell cars on the roads.
• Reduction from making other changes in transport efficiency, such as designing better mass transit systems.
• Reduction from increased reliance on renewable energy technologies that already exist.
• Reduction from the capture and storage of excess carbon from power plants and industrial activities.

Al Gore: Dealing with global warming inconvenient for rich & powerful

The truth about global warming is especially inconvenient and unwelcome to some powerful people and companies making enormous sums of money from activities they know full well will have to change in order to ensure the planet’s livability.

These people--especially those at a few multinational companies with the most at stake--have been spending many millions of dollars every year in figuring out ways of sowing public confusion about global warming.

Al Gore: We solved ozone crisis; can solve CO2 crisis by same methods

In 1987, 27 nations signed the Montreal Protocol, the first global environmental agreement to regulate CFCs. At last count there were 183 signatories, and the levels of CFCs have stabilized or declined.

Today, as the CO2 crisis unites us, we must remember the lesson of the CFC battle: that cool heads can prevail and alter the course of environmental change for the better.

Al Gore: Pushed for BTU tax on coal & gas, in 1993

The setback, said an environmental lobbyist, seemed to yank Gore back into his campaign-season zone of caution on environmental issues, as if he had been caught straying too far ahead-and to the left-of what the political system would bear.

Al Gore: Pushed emissions trading plan at Kyoto greenhouse summit

Nevertheless, at the Kyoto summit, the administration proposed a binding commitment to return CO2 emissions to 1990 levels between 2008 & 2012. After that, a series of market mechanisms would be employed to drive emissions below the 1990 baseline by 2017. They included an international trading system in which pollution permits could be bought and sold, giving companies incentive to cut emissions and sell their rights to another firm for a profit.

In his speech to the Kyoto delegates, Gore said that the real challenge was to change the human behaviors that were causing climate change. Gore’s whirlwind visit changed the dynamics of the conference. All sides gave ground. The US promised to cut emissions 7% below the 1990 levels between 2008 & 2012; the Europeans committed to 8% and Japan to 6%.