By Robert Tait
The ScotsmanMay 2, 2001
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, has given more ammunition to the Bush administration's environmental critics by declaring that the United States' ever-rising energy demands will take priority over conservation. He said coal and nuclear power provided the best means of averting an energy crisis and declared that the United States needed to build up to 1,900 new power stations over the next 20 years - averaging out at one a week - to meet its needs.
The energy rationing and conservation policies pursued in response to the oil crises of the 1970s, which produced the specter of long queues at petrol stations, were not an option now, Mr. Cheney said. "We cannot simply conserve or ration our way out of the situation we're in," he said. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound comprehensive energy policy."
Mr. Cheney said coal, oil and natural gas would continue to supply the bulk of America's energy for the foreseeable future and he dismissed possible alternative sources of energy, such as wind power and solar energy, because they were many years away from being realized.
The vice-president's comments, in a speech in Toronto on Monday, were loaded with significance because he runs a White House task force charged with coming up with an energy policy, one of President George Bush's priorities. In comments guaranteed to provoke environmentalists, Mr. Cheney said coal was America's "most plentiful source of affordable energy" and said its opponents who wanted it phased out on pollution grounds were "denying reality".
However, he acknowledged that it was "not the cleanest source of energy" and said the administration would promote efforts to develop "clean coal technology".
He also said the US should move towards greater use of nuclear power, which he described as "the cleanest method of power generation we know" - a contention also bitterly disputed by environmental campaigners. While nuclear power provides 20 per cent of the country's energy, its development has been hampered for lack of public support. No new nuclear reactors have been built in the US since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
Mr. Cheney dismissed criticism of the administration's intention to permit energy drilling on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. He said drilling on the 19 million acre refuge would be limited to a 2,000 acre area - which he described as one-fifth the size of Washington's Dulles airport.
The vice-president, in common with Mr. Bush and several other members of the administration, has extensive contacts in the oil industry. He gave up his lucrative role as chief executive of Halliburton, the world's biggest oil equipment firm, to become Mr. Bush's presidential running mate.
Mr. Cheney's speech is the clearest signal yet as to the tone of his energy report, due to go to Mr. Bush later this month. The energy task force has come under fire because its work has been shrouded in secrecy.
The Bush administration has faced a welter of criticism over its environmental policies, most notably over Mr. Bush's announcement in March that the US would not adhere to the Kyoto Treaty on global warming. Mr. Bush has also reneged on a campaign pledge to tighten up on emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by power stations, and has triggered controversy by delaying rules for lowering the permitted level of arsenic in water.
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