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Robert
Redford Campaigns About Another War
Dear American
Friend,
It is understandable
that we Americans feel an almost reflexive need for unanimity in trying
times like these. As a nation, we are rightly consumed with responding
to the terrorist attacks on September 11th. But, at some point
-- and I think we're beginning to get there -- we need to take a long-term
view also.
Really important domestic issues facing us before all of this happened
still have the same dimension and consequence. But it's much more
difficult to debate them in the aftermath of Sept. 11th,
unfortunately, because disagreement is sometimes characterized as unpatriotic
during times such as these and open. The gravity of the current
situation is not lost on any of us and we all want to do what's right
to insure our national security. It is with this in mind that
I felt compelled to write you today.
A handful of determined U.S. senators, encouraged by the White House,
are arguing that national security requires the Senate to rush a pro-oil
energy bill into law. They have vowed to hold up normal Senate
business and attach the bill to every piece of legislation that comes
to the Senate floor. So far they have failed in what The Boston
Globe is calling "oil opportunism." But
with President Bush himself now calling for rushed passage of this disastrous
bill, intense pressure is building on Senate leaders to succumb to the
emotions of the moment.
Using our national tragedy as an opportunity to advance the narrow interests
of the oil lobby would not be in the best interest of the public. This
bill, already passed by the House, would not only open the Arctic Refuge
to oil rigs, it would also pave the way for energy companies to exploit
and destroy pristine areas of Greater Yellowstone and other gems of
our natural heritage. As important, it would do nothing to address
energy security.
I'm asking for your immediate help in stopping this legislation. After
reading my letter I hope you'll forward this letter to your friends
and colleagues.
Last spring, the Bush administration and some members of Congress said
we had to pass the president's oil-friendly energy bill because we were
facing the most serious energy crisis since 1973. But here we
are, a mere six months later, and the energy crisis has vanished. Due
to a slowing economy and falling demand, the prices for gasoline, natural
gas and home heating oil have plunged. Meanwhile, the much-feared
"summer of blackouts" in California never happened, largely
because consumers and businesses made dramatic cuts in energy use by
launching the most successful statewide conservation campaign in history.
With no energy crisis to scare us with, the administration and pro-oil
senators are now promoting their "Drill the Arctic" plan under
the guise of national security and energy independence. Don't
buy it. It would take ten years to bring Arctic oil to market,
and when it arrives it would never equal more than two percent -- a
mere drop in the bucket -- of our annual consumption. Our nation
simply doesn't have enough oil to drill our way to energy independence
or even to affect world oil prices.
We possess a mere 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, but we consume
fully 25 percent of the world's oil supply. We could drill the
Arctic Refuge, Greater Yellowstone, and every other wildland in America
and we'd still be importing oil, paying worldwide prices for domestic
oil, and still vulnerable to wild gyrations in price and supply. As
The Atlanta Constitution put it: "Burning through our
tiny oil supply faster will not make our country more secure."
I'd go further: increasing our dependence on oil, whether from the Persian
Gulf or the Arctic Refuge, practically guarantees national *insecurity.
And we know that it will bring more habitat destruction, oil spills,
air pollution, and global warming. The public health implications
will be devastating.
If our nation wants to declare energy independence, then we have no
choice but to reduce our appetite for oil. There's no other way.
We need to rely on smarter and cleaner ways to power our
economy. We have the technology right now to increase fuel economy
standards to 40 miles per gallon. If we phased in that standard
by 2012 we'd save 15 times more oil than the Arctic Refuge is likely
to produce over 50 years. We could also give tax rebates for existing
hybrid gas-electric vehicles that get as much as 60 mpg We
could invest in public transit. We could launch an "Apollo
Project" to bring fuel cells and hydrogen fuel down to earth, allowing
us to begin the mass production of vehicles that emit only water as
a by-product. The list goes on and on.
In this climate of national trauma and war, it is up to us -- the people
-- to ensure that reason prevails and our natural heritage survives
intact. The preservation of irreplaceable wildlands like the Arctic
Refuge and Greater Yellowstone is a core American value. I have
never been more appreciative of the wisdom of that value than during
these past few weeks. When we are filled with grief and unanswerable
questions it is often to nature that we turn for refuge and comfort.
In the sanctuary of a forest or the vastness of the desert or
the silence of a grassland, we can touch a timeless force larger than
ourselves and our all-too-human problems. This is where the healing
begins.
Those who would sell out this natural heritage -- this spiritual heritage
-- would destroy a wellspring of American strength. What's worse,
their rush to exploit the wildness that feeds our souls won't do
a thing to solve our energy problems. There are plenty of sensible
and patriotic ways to guarantee our nation's energy security, but destroying
the Arctic Refuge is not one of them.
Please tell this to your senators! They
urgently need to hear it because the pressure is on to move this pro-oil
bill to a vote in the next few weeks. It will take you only a
minute to send them an electronic message from NRDC's SaveBioGems website.
Go to
http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic/index.asp?src=ab0110a
And please forward this message to your family and friends. Millions
of Americans need to know about this cynical attempt to promote the
interests of energy companies at the expense of everyone else.
Sincerely yours,
Robert Redford |
