|
Next
Gas Crunch Could be Lethal
Virginian-Pilot, Hampton Roads,VA
December 6, 2005
If you warm your house by burning a petroleum product, you probably
already expect this winter’s bills to be brutal. Natural gas
prices will be 50 percent higher than last year, oil and propane
more than a third.
Families can expect to shell out hundreds of dollars more than in
past winters; in some cases, thousands. In the perverse cruelty
of the marketplace, if it gets especially cold, the costs might
be even higher, especially for natural gas, with which so many Americans
heat their home, with which so many utilities produce electricity,
and on which so many businesses depend.
Given all those competing needs, some observers worry that parts
of the nation may actually run short of natural gas before winter’s
end. Companies may have to close, at least temporarily, because
they can’t afford to stay open. In any case, home heating
bills will climb by the largest margin in 30 years; some experts
warn that this will cause more than inconvenience and expense, but
also fatalities.
Federal officials, industry lobbyists and consumer advocates all
acknowledge that there’s not much that can be done about this
winter’s supply of oil and gas. It’s already in the
storage tanks.
But there are familiar ways to ease the strain, ways to prevent
an inconvenience from becoming a crisis, or worse.
The size of the threat is reflected in Washington’s conversion
on conservation. The face of energy efficiency was once Jimmy Carter’s
wan grin above a cardigan: “Conservation may be a sign of
personal virtue,” Vice President Dick Cheney said a few years
ago, “but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive
energy policy.”
Now, of course, it may be our only real choice. Federal officials
of all stripes are extolling both the personal and public virtues
of conservation as a means of stretching what we’ve got in
those tanks. Today’s politicians know (as did those who applauded
Carter, even while shivering) that conservation — and perhaps
only conservation — can quickly change how much energy America
uses.
The federal Department of Energy, for example, has produced a new
guide on the basics of energy efficiency. The emphasis is squarely
on helping Americans save money, but there’s a prominent mention
of cutting pollution and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
But conservation can’t do much to help Americans afford expensive
heat this winter. For that, Congress needs to spend money. Money
for the scandalously underfunded Low Income Home Energy Assistance
Program is stalled between the Senate and the House, both of which
skipped town recently without funding it.
Last week, Gov. Mark R. Warner said Virginia will chip in $17.9
million for heating assistance in the commonwealth after he and
other governors failed to convince Congress to behave with even
a mite of responsibility.
“If we simply wait for the federal government and Congress
to act, we may be sitting here at the end of the winter with still
no action,” Warner said. More than 125,000 Virginians have
already asked for help.
Such need, though, is lost on a Congress that seldom sees beyond
the Beltway and its riches. Because of its institutional disregard
for America’s poor, Congress has again forced its responsibility
on the states, which can ill afford it, and on charities already
stretched thin by Washington incompetence.
As they lay in their cozy beds, congressional leaders know that
a severe winter may well leave some Americans dying because they
don’t have a warm place to sleep. Before it gets too cold,
they should consider acting like it.
|
