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Let’s Enact the President’s Energy Plan

Congressman Bob Barr, August 20, 2001

In recent months, as gas prices hit $2.25 a gallon and California experienced rolling blackouts, there has been much debate in Washington, D.C. and around the country over the need for a comprehensive energy policy. While I believe both sides have played politics to some extent, one thing is overwhelmingly clear - America is not producing enough energy to provide for our growing economy. We have not had a national energy policy in a generation. We desperately need national leadership on this issue; and we need it now.

In order to avoid even more volatile prices in the future, America needs a balanced energy policy to promote conservation, increase production and protect the environment. That’s exactly why I recently voted for, and the House of Representatives passed, the Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) Act.

Conservation features prominently in the SAFE Act. It mandates reasonable increases in fuel standards for sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that will save at least five billion gallons of fuel when fully implemented. This bill also offers incentives for cleaner energy sources, such as hydroelectric power, and alternative fueled vehicles, such as gas-electric hybrid cars. It will also help promote new technologies and new domestic sources of energy. We need to encourage renewable sources and promising developments, such as clean-coal technology and next-generation nuclear power, which is cleaner, more efficient and safer than ever. It is also critical we develop more energy sources here at home. We can garner new energy while being environmentally prudent.

Vice President Cheney, who has been appointed by President Bush to lead a national energy task force, noted that simply meeting the demand for electricity over the next 20 years, will require between 1,300 and 1,900 new power plants. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, U.S. energy use has increased by 30 percent, more than double the increase in domestic energy production over the same period. In California, the population and energy demand has grown and grown while they have failed to build one new power plant in nearly 20 years. This is an issue that has been grossly neglected over that past generation, but has been made a top priority in the SAFE Act.

America has become far too dependent on foreign oil. Sixty percent of our oil comes from other countries; this creates a serious drain on our economy, and undermines our national security. By relying on OPEC countries that see us as a needy customer, we leave our national security vulnerable to the whims of foreign nations. If oil is worth fighting for in the Middle East, it is worth exploring for under American soil, and that is precisely what the SAFE Act would encourage. For example, exploring for oil in a tiny sliver of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (a total of only 2,000 acres) would yield more than 50 years worth of what we now import from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, reducing our dependency on foreign oil and foreign despots.

The SAFE Act will also help modernize our aging and outdated infrastructure. We need an estimated 38,000 miles of new natural gas pipelines to move enough fuel to supply our energy needs. And we must repair and upgrade entire electricity transmission grids, and build new ones, in order to meet the energy demand we face.

By enacting the SAFE Act, Congress can put in place a balanced energy plan to increase production and promote conservation, while protecting our environmental priorities. This is, quite simply the only way to help guarantee a secure, reliable energy supply to fuel the U.S. economy in the 21st century. We must not let the liberal national media, and the environmental extremists, deter the President’s efforts in this regard, with their distortions and scare tactics.

Bob Barr, a former federal prosecutor, represents Georgia's 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves on the House Judiciary and Financial Services Committees, and is Vice Chair of the Government Reform Committee.