Hightower Lowdown

Memo to Dubya, who said
recently he was “deeply concerned
” about California’s
energy crisis: Try to avoid
applying the term “deep” to
any of your thoughts.
As regards California,
Bush is so shallow you can
read a newspaper through
him. He’s simply exploiting
California’s problems as a
cover to do favors for
ARCO, BP Amoco, Exxon,
and the other oil giants who
ran a pipeline of cash into
his presidential campaign.
He declared that the
electrical crunch pointed up
“a long-term issue . . . and
that is, how do we find more
energy supplies?” He
answered his own question
by tearing a page out of the
oil lobby’s wish list: Let the
corporations rip into the
ecologically sensitive Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
Little George said he would
act “boldly and swiftly” to
enact his plan.
This plan, of course, is a
fraud. Piping oil out of the
Alaskan wilderness will
have zero impact on electric
supplies in California. Oil
accounts for about 1% of
the source energy used for
electrical generation in
California. And even on the
most absurdly accelerated
schedule, ANWR’s small
reserves of oil wouldn’t start
flowing for over a decade.