CyberBabble
Site-Seeing on the Internet

At The Crossroads: The Pillage People

Duff MacDonald
Mirror contributing writer

   The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (www.ipcc.ch) held a conference in Geneva last week and released its Third Assessment Report (TAR), which "finds new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." Almost a thousand people contributed to this report which was approved by 99 IPCC member nations in Shanghai last month. A 19 page Summary for Policymakers Adobe Acrobat PDF is available at (www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/ tar/WGI-SPM.pdf). 
   We often wonder what's up with the weather, (www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming) but the writing on the wall is like a last will and testament graffitied all over the planet. Our mother earth is begging us for alternatives to burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, and our nation should be on the forefront of finding alternatives. But not only is there a wolf in the White (Hen) House, one of his best buddies is the leader of Enron (www.enron.com), one of the power pillagers (its 2000 revenues were $101 billion) and the Prez has given him an all-access backstage pass. 
   The IPCC report states, "About three-quarters of the anthropogenic (manmade) emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere during the past 20 years is due to fossil fuel burning. The rest is predominantly due to land-use change, especially deforestation." The globe is in clearly in crisis, which calls for bold innovative thought, not a rollback of environmental regulations to make billions for the energy robber barons. Referring to Bush’s unwillingness to use the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (www.ferc.fed.us) to regulate wholesale electricity prices, and simultaneous willingness to relax EPA regulations, Representative Henry Waxman (Democrat, L.A.) (www.house.gov/waxman) told the L.A. Times that he hoped that Bush would not, "cynically use California’s plight as a ruse for undoing the nation’s environmental laws." 
   Unfortunately, Waxman’s worst fears will probably be realized as Bush is an oilman, and second in command is another oilman, Vice President Dick Cheney, the former head of Halliburton (www.halliburton.com), who "retired" with a $33 million golden parachute.
   Just about everyone seems to want to skewer Governor Gray Davis's proposal to keep our lights and computers on in California, forgetting that he inherited this problem. The Republicans are screaming socialism, the Democrats don’t want to pay so much money for the power grid, and John Q. Public doesn’t want his utility bill to increase. Others are claiming that the state ownership of the power grid would simply not work. These people seem to be ignorant of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (www.tva.gov/abouttva/
index.htm) the largest public power company in America, which provides power to eight million residents in 170 counties and the seven states of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. 
   Craven Crowell, the Chairman of TVA, sets the record straight, "The experience in California has proven once and for all that public power has a place." No one else inside or outside of California, has spoken with such clarity (www.tva.gov/california/index.htm), "We have no quarrel with companies making a profit, but somewhere along the line we must remember that all of us bear responsibility for the public good, particularly as it relates to electricity."
   Governor Davis’ plan to purchase the transmission systems of Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric may seem costly now, but imagine our plight if the utility companies were to go belly up. What if their creditors, the "Texas Energy Cartel" took over California’s power grid as payment for the outstanding debt? To view Davis’ plan go to his Web site (www.governor.ca.gov/state/govsite/gov
_htmldisplay.jsp) and click on the Press Room link, then Press Releases and scroll down to his press conference held on February 16, 2001. 
   The California energy crisis was fabricated by corporate greed. We must not abandon concern for our planet’s safety so the energy producers can make additional short-sighted profits at the expense of our long-term living on this planet. 
   The IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (TAR), is a wake up call: "The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased by 31% since 1750. Data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years. Globally, it is very likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year…since 1861."
   California is at a crucial crossroads -- but so is the rest of America.