Entrenchment costs

Re-reporting, compilation, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett
U.S. Government, Corporate Black gold corruption sets back policy, progress

Three in four oil and gas lobbyists worked for federal government
Washington Post July 22
A Washington Post analysis shows “Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill.… All told, more than 430 industry lobbyists once had jobs in the legislative or executive branches according to the Post analysis based on CRP [Center for Responsive Politics] lobbying data, employment histories and other records.” Records show “scores had ties to major congressional committees that shape federal oil policies or to lawmakers who supported industry priorities while in Congress.”

(ALLEGED)
Bribes  abound ─ New York Times July 22
A four-member bipartisan subcommittee on Standards of Official Conduct has found evidence of U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel’s improper use of his position as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in supporting “a tax loophole worth more than half-a-billion dollars for an oil company” [Nabors Industries oil drilling company]. Allegedly the “oil company’s executive, Eugene Isenberg, had promised $1 million for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York..” As well, the committee has explored “whether Rangel broke ethics rules when he failed to report taxable income received from his Dominican villa.” At 80 years of age, this entrenched Member of Congress, reelected repeatedly by his constituency is slated to face an ethics violations trial.

Oil and gas and coal industries
Some of the most powerful lobbies in Washington ─ Kretzmann July 23
As the latest energy legislation misses the mark, Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International recalls today on Democracy Now that twenty Democrats including climate champions like Sen. John Kerry in earlier actions had “voted against removing subsidies to the oil and gas industry.” This was happening as 100,000 barrels a day were spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP again this week suspended cleanup due to weather.

Environment be damned
Friends of the Earth policy analyst Kate Horner on the Democracy Now program today spoke of the U.S.’s dangerously entrenched obstructionist and regressive energy policies. “I think that the position of the United States government in the negotiations is finally being made clear to the rest of the world,” she said. Of last year’s Copenhagen Climate Conference, she said, “No one really foresaw the extent to which the U.S. government would actually play such an obstructionist role.”

The biggest problem with the U.S. right now in the international negotiations is that they are actively trying to dismantle the international negotiations, trying to weaken the international architecture and replace it with a system of pledges, something far weaker, which is “not based on science and not based on equity.”

President Obama’s special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, has taken a stance whereby the government actively tries to undermine all of the relevant, important provisions in the international architecture ─ a most damaging stance.

We are in a place where the onus is on the rest of the world to continue to be leaders in their respective areas. Europe, for example, was the architect of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only existing international legally binding instrument. The questions are whether European leadership will put muscle behind it and support it; and whether the rest of the world will pressure the United States, isolate it in its obstructionist role.

Oil is King/Queen

U.S. in IRAQ
Militarizing [oil] “diplomacy” in Iraq ─
“One more step in the blurring of the lines between military activities and U.S. State Department or diplomatic activities,” Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security is reported by McClatchy Newspapers.

Under terms of a 2008 ‘status of forces agreement,” all U.S. troops are scheduled to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. But a sizable American civilian presence including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, and five consulate-like ‘Enduring Presence Posts’ in the Iraqi hinterlands will remain. Therefore, the U.S. “State Department is laying plans for “diplomats to field an army… In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance.”

Entrenchment hurts the globe: the earth, the air, the waters, the land, the people.

Sources and notes
“Three of every four oil and gas lobbyists worked for federal government” (By Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy Washington Post Staff Writer), July 22, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072106468.html?hpid=topnews
“House Panel Will Try Rangel in Ethics Cases” (ERIC LIPTON and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI), July 22, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/nyregion/23rangel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=rangel&st=cse
“State Dept. planning to field a small army in Iraq” (Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers), July 21, 2010, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/21/97915/state-dept-planning-to-field-a.html#storylink=omni_popular
Democracy Now July 23, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/
“As Senate Dems Give Up on Climate Bill, What Does the Future Hold for US Energy Policy?” July 23, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/23/senate_dems_give_up_on_climate
“Three of Every Four Oil & Gas Lobbyists Worked for Federal Government,” July 23, 2010,
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/23/three_of_every_four_oil_gas

Friends of the Earth is an international network in seventy-seven countries around the world whose national groups put pressure on domestic governments for a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and very strong provisions for additional resources for developing countries.

IRAQ’s OIL
Petroleum is Iraq’s most valuable mineral. This country has the world’s second largest known reserves. Before the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq was the second largest oil-exporting state. Oil production contributes the largest single portion to GDP and constitutes almost all of Iraq’s foreign exchange. Iraq is a founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but disagreements over production quotas and world oil prices have often led Iraq into conflict with other members.

Because Iraq has such a short coastline, it has depended heavily on transnational pipelines to export its oil. Iraq’s narrow coastline is adjacent to that of Iran.

In 1985 Iraq constructed a new pipeline that fed into the Petroline (in Saudi Arabia), which terminated at the Red Sea port of Yanbu’. In 1988, that line was replaced with a new one but it never reached full capacity and was shut down, along with all other Iraqi oil outlets, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In December 1996, the Turkish pipeline was reopened under the oil-for-food program. Later the gulf terminal of Mīnā’ al-Bakr also was revived. In 1998, repairs were begun on the Syrian pipeline. Following the end of the 2003 conflict, Iraq’s pipelines were subjected to numerous acts of sabotage by guerrilla forces.

Oil was first discovered in Iraq in 1927 near Karkūk by the foreign-owned Turkish Petroleum Company, which was renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) in 1929. Finds at Mosul and Al-Basrah followed. Several new fields were discovered and put into production in the 1940s and ‘50s. New fields have continued to be discovered and developed. [Iraq notes from Britannica]

Kyoto Protocol
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed by 154 nations at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro calls for voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Under the convention, international negotiations for stronger commitments to reductions in emissions led to the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement proposed in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol is named for the Japanese city in which it was negotiated.

The Kyoto Protocol has been the subject of intense debate and discussion, which tend to distinguish developed countries (which are included under the protocol) from developing countries (which are not included). Within developed countries, the protocol has its proponents, who seek to reduce the risks of future human-caused climate change; and its opponents, who seek to avoid the risks the protocol poses to economic development and growth. Debate has focused on the United States because it emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other country; and because, in 2001, the United States government rejected the protocol for economic reasons. Despite the lack of support by the United States, the protocol garnered sufficient participation to go into force in 2005 [Britannica].