The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

GRACE Statement: House GAS Act is Full of It

***For Immediate Release***

Statement from GRACE President Alice Slater on H.R. 3893 the “Gasoline for America’s Security Act of 2005”

“It borders on obscene to use the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita to ram-through an oil and gas industry wish-list of provisions so extreme that they were rejected just two months ago when Congress debated the energy bill.

Chairman Barton’s bill is a taxpayer-funded get-out-of-jail free card that allows new refineries to pollute at will and runs roughshod over low-income Gulf Coast families who are told they must sacrifice the health and safety of their communities to prop up an energy sector already making record profits.

The proper way to respond to the energy issues raised by the catastrophes of Katrina and Rita is not to spend more taxpayer dollars subsidizing a dirty, inefficient and unreliable fossil fuel economy, but to commit to a moon-shot project to harness the clean, inexhaustible energy of the sun, the wind and the tides.  

While European nations leap ahead of the United States in development of renewable energy technologies, this legislation keeps American workers slaves to an archaic fossil fuel economy that befouls our air and water and ensures our continued dependence on foreign sources of energy.  It ignores oil and gas industry price gouging and does nothing to punishing those taking advantage of natural disasters to increase fuel prices unreasonably.

Members of Congress can be better stewards of America’s tax dollars by rejecting oil and gas monopolies and instead investing funds to jump start a clean, efficient renewable energy market.”

Contact:

Chris Cooper, GRACE Public Relations Director
212-726-9161; ccooper@gracelinks.org