Subject: EEE会議（米国のエネルギー・環境保護派の対立：ANWR開発問題）
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 17:54:50 +0900
From: "kkaneko" <kkaneko@eagle.ocn.ne.jp>

各位殿
ブッシュ政権が国内の石油供給能力拡大策の１つとして、原子力と並んで最重視して
きたアラスカの「極地国立野生生物保護地区」（ANWR)での油田開発促進法案をめ
ぐって、米国議会上院はこれまで賛否伯仲のまま激論を繰り返してきましたが、先週
ついに５２対４８の僅差で同案を否決しました。同案を上院が否決したのは今回が２
度目ですが、中東動乱の中で輸入石油依存度の一層の低減を目指すブッシュ政権が今
後どんな方法で巻き返しを図るかは、米国におけるエネルギー開発派と環境保護派の
攻防戦の行方を卜する上でも引き続き注視すべきものと思います。詳細は、次のNY
Times社説（３月２３日）をどうぞ。なお、NY Timesは基本的に環境保護派に近い立
場なので、念のため。
金子熊夫
****************************************************

The Missing Energy Strategy
The Senate struck a blow for the environment and for common sense last week,
defeating President Bush's second attempt in less than a year to open the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Credit goes to the
Democrats, who mainly held firm in a close 52-to-48 vote, and to a small,
sturdy group of moderate Republicans, which now includes Norm Coleman, a
Minnesota freshman who wisely chose not to renege on his campaign promise to
protect the refuge despite an aggressive sales pitch from senior Republicans
and the White House.

The pitch included the usual hyperbole from the Alaska delegation, which
typically inflates official estimates of economically recoverable oil in the
refuge by a factor of four. It also included a new but equally spurious
argument minted for the occasion, namely that rising gas prices and the war
in Iraq made drilling more urgent than ever. In truth, Arctic oil will have
no influence on gas prices until it actually comes out of the ground, and
even then it is likely to reduce American dependence on foreign oil by only
a few percentage points.

Nevertheless it is much too soon for the environmental community or its
Senate champions, like Joseph Lieberman, John McCain and James Jeffords, to
rest on their well-earned laurels. Drilling proposals will almost certainly
resurface, most likely in energy bills now on the drawing boards in both the
House and Senate. Beyond that, neither the White House nor the Republican
leadership shows any appetite for developing what America really needs:
innovative policies that point toward a cleaner, more efficient and less
oil-dependent energy future. Instead, the White House and its Congressional
allies continue to push a retrograde strategy ・of which Arctic drilling was
just one component ・that faithfully caters to President Bush's friends in
the oil, gas and coal industries and remains heavily biased toward the
production of fossil fuels.

On this score, the energy bills now being drawn up on Capitol Hill offer no
more hope than the 2002 models. Last year's energy plan, which mercifully
expired in a conference committee, was top-heavy with subsidies for industry
and light on incentives for energy efficiency, alternative fuels and other
forms of conservation. The news from the relevant Congressional committees
suggests more of the same. Just last week, Edward Markey of Massachusetts
offered his colleagues on the House energy committee a proposal to increase
fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks, including S.U.V.'s, by
about 20 percent by 2010. This is not an unreasonable goal, given Detroit's
technological capabilities, and would save 1.6 million barrels a day, more
than double the recent imports from Iraq and far more than the Arctic refuge
could produce in the same time frame. The committee crushed the idea.

The last two years have given the country plenty of reasons to re-examine
its energy policies: a power crisis in California, the attacks of 9/11 and
now a war in the very heart of the biggest oil patch in the world. It is
plainly time to move forward in a systematic way with new ideas. But the
best we can do, it appears, is to beat back bad ones.