Posted on 01/26/2006 7:49:42 AM PST by SmithL
Washington -- Republican leaders, after losing a bitter fight over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge late last year, plan to bring the contentious issue before Congress again this year.
Pro-drilling lawmakers now are making a new argument, saying rising oil prices and fears of an oil shock sparked by the escalating dispute over Iran's nuclear program provide more reasons to open the Alaskan refuge.
"I can't imagine that anybody would expect with the Iranian situation that we will sit by and not take another shot at (drilling in the refuge)," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a longtime champion of drilling, said during a speech Wednesday.
"We've got to find a way," Domenici said. "We think there's one out there."
But opponents of drilling argue that GOP leaders face even tougher odds trying to approve the measure this year.
In November, moderate House Republicans staged a revolt against the drilling proposal, stripping it from a leadership-sponsored budget bill. A month later, Senate Democrats and a few Republicans blocked Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' effort to authorize drilling by attaching it to a defense spending bill that funded U.S. troops and hurricane relief.
"None of the politics have changed," said Kevin Curtis, a vice president at the National Environmental Trust, an environmental group. "Ted Stevens and the pro-(drilling) folks said that last year was their best shot -- and they didn't get it.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
"Selling points"?! Like they're in the market for a new car or something?!
for the life of me i just can not figure out why we arent drilling there. it makes absolutely no sense to me. we keep financing iran and all those other third world middle eastern countries who want to wipe us off the map by continually sucking up their oil. we have a stash we can tap into and choose not to. just moronic.
We need to mine shale oil as well in northern US and Canada.
absolutely
If this comes up again and it is blocked again by CONgress, I would not oppose Alaska getting out of the union and becoming its own nation...by force if needed.
We shouldn't need to have 'selling points'. It should sell itself!
They didn't even try to mount a media campaign on the last go round. Increasing demand is the number one reason for $65 a barrel oil and higher gas prices yet they let the dems skate by with their Bush Big Oil lie. They should have the Environmentalists and the Dems burning at the stake over this Oil dependance issue. It's like they aren't even trying!
Kevin Curtis is Vice President for Government Affairs at The National Environmental Trust (NET) in Washington, D.C. He serves as chief lobbyist and congressional strategist for NET and its various legislative campaigns.
He also worked on Capitol Hill in the legislative department of the Department of Energy, and on various issue campaigns.
Kevin Curtis, the government affairs director at the National Environmental Trust, who has lobbied the Department of Defense rollbacks, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, and other issues.
******
Nov 2003
At a time when the White House refuses to recognize global warming as scientific fact and the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), refers to climate change as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," it is something of a shock that the McCain-Lieberman bill garnered so much support. "We were thrilled -- and a bit surprised -- that we broke 40," said Casey Aden-Wansbery, press secretary for Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). So buoyed by the results was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that after the vote he told reporters he would consider reintroducing the bill as early as next spring.
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Kevin Curtis, vice president for government affairs at the National Environmental Trust, a research and advocacy group, said that it would not be "politically smart or morally smart" for the clean energy movement to ignore public fears about job security. The steady decline of the automotive sector in recent years has led to tension between organized labor and the environmental movement.
But, he added, problems the auto industry is currently grappling with are eerily reminiscent of the auto industry crisis of the 1970s under the Middle Eastern oil embargo – and in that case, Congress stepped in to raise fuel efficiency standards and ultimately helped lift the industry out of peril.
The struggle now, Curtis explained, is for the environmental community to engage organized labor to build "a domestic auto industry that has good union jobs with good benefits … producing cars that are fuel efficient, and are interesting to consumers."
http://tinyurl.com/9l4g9
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The National Environmental Trust is a non-profit, non-partisan organization established in 1994 to inform citizens about environmental problems and how they affect our health and quality of life.
******
National Environmental Trust Executive:
Philip E. Clapp, president.
Salary $155,000, benefits $12,229.
President since February 1994.
1992, Member of the steering committee of Environmentalists for the Clinton/Gore campaign.
Former employee of Senator Timothy Wirth
The public relations firm known today as the National Environmental Trust began very quietly in 1993 when Joshua Reichert, environmental director of Pew Charitable Trusts, circulated a proposal to other foundation leaders to join in funding a new venture called “Environmental Strategies.” Its foundationese mission statement was “to assist environmental organizations to conduct public education campaigns on priority national environmental issues.”
What that really meant was to help environmentalists split the wise use movement with wedge issues and smear wise users as being anti-environment rather than being anti-environmentalist.
Most of the people who received Reichert’s proposal had been at the 1992 Environmental Grantmakers Association retreat (click here to visit the Center’s archive of transcriptions from their sessions). They agreed with Chuck Clusen’s panel (click here for transcription) that no single Green Group had produced a full-spectrum power and pressure machine. Most agreed with Hooper Brooks that the foundations had to become prescriptive in order to force into existence the coalitions and alliances which could form that machine. The real job of the new public relations group would be to create synthetic coalitions.
snip
Environmental Strategies was very quietly incorporated in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 1994. The incorporators were: Frances Beinecke, Natural Resources Defense Council; Donald K. Ross, Rockefeller Family Fund; Douglas Foy, Conservation Law Foundation; and Thomas Wathen, Pew Charitable Trusts (which gave $650,000 for startup through the Tides Foundation—another donor-advised fund). Wathen subsequently became an officer in the PR firm now known as the National Environmental Trust with a current salary of $135,000 and benefits of $22,797.
Who are these symphonic arrangers?
Donald K. Ross is profiled on the Rockefeller Family Fund page and the USPIRG page.
If you’ve visited the Yale University campus, you know the name Beinecke seems to be everywhere, Beinceke Plaza, Beinecke Library. The NRDC’s deputy director at the time, Frances Beinecke (Yale Class of ’71), is the daughter of William S. Beinecke, retired CEO of Sperry & Hutchinson, who was the principal donor of the Beinecke Library. Frances is a trustee of the Yale Corporation (governing board of the university). She has since become the NRDC’s executive director (1998). She co-founded the New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV) in 1989 with Paul Elston (her husband), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Larry Rockefeller, a lawyer with NRDC. When she helped incorporate Environmental Strategies, she was earning $88,718 a year at NRDC, with a $10,284 benefit package, a nice frill to the family fortune. She’s rich and powerful and connected.
snip
The original staff is indicative: it was a virtual Who’s Who of Democratic Party politics. Philip E. Clapp, executive director (now president), was a member of the national steering committee of Environmentalists for Clinton-Gore. Mike Casey, media relations director, came directly from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Staffer Arlie Schardt served as press secretary for Al Gore’s first unsuccessful presidential bid. Schardt runs his own outfit, Environmental Media Services.
The media contracts were handled by Washington, D.C.-based Fenton Communications, long a favorite of the far left: During the 1980s, for example, Fenton Communications had contracts with the Christic Institute and the communist regimes of Angola and Nicaragua as a registered agent of a foreign government. Fenton Communications is best known for engineering the Alar scare that destroyed hundreds of family apple orchard businesses. David Fenton talked CBS’s “60 Minutes” into reporting as fact an unproven claim by Beinecke’s Natural Resources Defense Council that Alar, a root-applied chemical used to ripen apples, was a serious cancer risk to children. Horrified parents across the nation quit purchasing apples as a result of the report, which bankrupted whole communities of apple orchardists. In fact, the government was already phasing out Alar (which the NRDC knew) and not a single case of any disease at all was ever attributed to Alar. Shardt’s Environmental Media Services shares office space with Fenton Communications.
snip
David Fenton of Fenton Communications told the group about the media, its role in politics, and how to use it better.
Fenton stressed, “Educating the media so as to educate the public,” and gave examples from actual news reports. The Seattle session featured a Post-Intelligencer story he had planted on how logging kills salmon.
Fenton also emphasized “reaching different audiences on the Endangered Species Act such as religious, scientific, health, and children’s constituencies. How we avoid creating sympathy for the other side.”
John Hoyt of Pyramid Communications led a short panel discussion on what works to get on the radar screen of a member of Congress, followed by role playing on a visit to a reluctant congressman’s office, using the technique of showing news media results to members and staff for maximum payoff.
snip
The National Environmental Trust sounds like it’s a great repository of environmental treasures, like the national park system or something. In fact, it’s just a public relations firm in the service of wealthy foundations with social and political agendas.
Grants: The Foundation Center database contains records of 55 grants to the National Environmental Trust. In their records:
Pew Charitable Trusts gave a total of $21,000,000.
Turner Foundation gave a total of $12,290,000.
The Energy Foundation gave a total of $1,659,600.
W. Alton Jones Foundation gave a total of $1,350,000.
John Merck Fund gave a total of $730,000.
Bauman Family Foundation gave a total of $350,000.
The Scherman Foundation gave a total of $250,000.
More...
http://tinyurl.com/arwyl
"In November, moderate House Republicans staged a revolt against the drilling proposal, stripping it from a leadership-sponsored budget bill. A month later, Senate Democrats and a few Republicans blocked Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' effort to authorize drilling by attaching it to a defense spending bill that funded U.S. troops and hurricane relief. "
That is why we need to put up strong candidates in the primaries. Put a scare into these RINOS.
I think the states whose representatives oppose drilling & production should be last in line for fuel allocations.
Massachusetts votes no? Fine, turn off the pipeline.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita's Effects on Energy
October 6, 2005
Witnesses:
Kevin Curtis, Senior Vice President for Programs, National Environmental Trust
Representing environmental interests, Kevin Curtis of the National Environmental Trust
he delivered strong recommendations that emphasized the country's "golden opportunity" to practice conservation and rebuild the Gulf Coast incorporating lessons learned and sustainable practices. He challenged the committee to lead the way in implementing higher automobile fuel efficiency standards
Curtis also criticized House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) for rolling back Clean Air Act and other regulatory requirements as part of a plan to increase refining capacity. "New refineries should stand out as models," he said.
******
"It's clear that the president and his allies in the House are using Katrina as cover for ramming through proposals to weaken the Clean Air Act," said Kevin Curtis, vice president of the National Environmental Trust.
Democrats are also skeptical. They say oil companies are disinclined to build new plants because tight capacity keeps profits healthy. However, expanding existing plants is a less costly way to gain extra gasoline production -- and could become even cheaper if the "new source review" rule is gutted.
"This rush to push through legislation of dubious virtue without any significant review is both unnecessary and unwise," said Rep. John Dingell, senior Democrat on the House Energy Committee.
Sounds like congressmen are sending a message to the oil industry.
Send campaign $$$, it's an election year!
Kevin Curtis, vice president of National Environmental Trust, said the frenzy of new energy-related proposals reveals just how myopic the energy bill really was. "It's just astounding that not a month after the Republican leaders in Congress set into motion their much-ballyhooed 10-year plan to chart the course of America's energy future, the whole thing has been turned on its head," he said. "America can already look back and marvel that its supposedly forward-looking 'energy-security' plan couldn't stand the test of one hurricane."
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But environmental groups and some Democrats said the new rules will do practically nothing to address gas prices or the nation's dependence on oil. Even assuming the administration is right about conserving 10 billion gallons of gas over four years, the savings will barely affect a nation that burns 11 billion gallons every month, said Kevin S. Curtis, vice president of the National Environmental Trust.
''President Bush must have no clue how much gas costs in this country," Curtis said.
Schedule the vote two weeks after Iran closes the Straits. That would bring the issue into focus rather nicely.
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