Fw: [PUBCIT_PRESS] Dark Day for Consumers, Environment as House Approves Energy Package

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----- Original Message -----

From: " Public Citizen Press Office " <pcpress@...>

<PUBCIT_PRESS@...>

Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 4:25 PM

Subject: [PUBCIT_PRESS] Dark Day for Consumers, Environment as House

Approves Energy Package

> Public Citizen Press Releases

> Providing the latest information about Public Citizen activities

> -------------------------------------------

>

> Public Citizen issued the following press release, April 11, 2003

>

> Dark Day for Consumers, Environment as House Approves Energy Package

>

> Statement of Joan Claybrook, President of Public Citizen

>

> In approving the Energy Policy Act of 2003 (H.R.6), the U.S. House of

> Representatives has abandoned consumers and the environment in favor of

> corporate energy interests. The legislation repeals important

> electricity regulations and does virtually nothing to minimize oil

> consumption while offering billions in handouts and tax breaks for some

> of the wealthiest and most-polluting companies in the world - even as

> budget deficits are growing.

>

> The giveaways to big oil in the House legislation won't lead to

> energy independence. The United States is already the third largest

> crude oil producing nation in the world. The problem is not that we

> don't produce enough, it's that we consume too much. Yet lawmakers

> rejected a sensible amendment offered by Reps. Sherwood Boehlert and

> Markey to reduce demand by improving the fuel economy of cars and

> light trucks.

>

> Lawmakers also irresponsibly rejected an amendment offered by Rep.

> Dingell to preserve and strengthen protections for consumers of

> electricity. The bill rewards a fraudulent industry by replacing vital

> consumer protections with unregulated corporate control over energy

> markets, potentially leading to the kind of price-gouging that plagued

> California consumers after deregulation. It also pre-empts local

> control over power lines by giving federal officials the power to

> override state decisions and seize private property to build power

> lines.

>

> Further, the bills put more people at risk by expanding reliance on

> nuclear power. It mandates bloated spending on nuclear energy research

> and development, commits taxpayer dollars to the construction of new

> nuclear power plants via the Nuclear Power 2010 program, and extends

> Price- insurance subsidies to proposed new reactors. These

> unjustifiable subsidies to a mature industry distort electricity markets

> by granting nuclear power an unfair and undesirable advantage over safe,

> clean energy alternatives. Moreover, provisions to fund reprocessing of

> nuclear waste from commercial power plants initiate an inadvisable

> reversal of U.S. nonproliferation policy.

>

> H.R. 6 will not lead to safe, clean, affordable energy in America. As

> the Senate moves to consider parallel legislation, lawmakers should

> prevent these anti-environment, anti-consumer provisions from becoming

> law.

> ###

>

> Also:

>

> A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Bush administration

> from gutting rules that forbid the use of the popular " dolphin safe "

> label on tuna caught using encirclement nets that endanger dolphins,

> writing that the change in the definition appears to have been

> influenced more by international trade policies than scientific

> evidence.

>

> Read more here:

>

> http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=520

>

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