National Debate: President Bush promises tempers will rise if Congress doesn't pass an energy bill this summer. The Senate has rejected an amendment calling for mandatory limits on fossil fuels to address global warming. Opponents call caps costly and say businesses and jobs would be forced overseas. While both the House and Senate have made a concerted effort to address the nation’s contribution to global warming, self sufficiency, and national security, the solution to return to domestic deposits of coal and uranium as viable energy sources renews a different set of health, environmental, and security concerns.

• Numerous incentives for renewable fuels including hydrogen, wind, solar and biomass will be included in the bill.



• President Bush touts nuclear power and, two decades after Chernobyl illustrated the dangers of nuclear technology, some environmentalists accept it as the lesser of evils.

Extraction Boom: Exemplifying the energy bill tug o’ war back east, a ground level battle between “renewables” and “extractables” is heating up here in the west. A subsidiary of San Diego-based Sempra Energy wants to build Granite Fox, a 1,450 megawatt coal-fired plant costing $2 billion to open in 2010. The energy would be shipped to L.A. and San Francisco via a major high-voltage transmission line. Green power advocates have an ambitious plan to build an energy park with generators to harness geothermal, wind and solar power. They have their sights set on the same high-voltage line, where there is only space left for one of the two.

Navajo Nation Just Says No: Navajo President Joe Shirley proclaims uranium mining and processing on Navajo Nation land will be banned. Shirley accuses the powers that be of committing genocide. Hundreds of miners and other Native Americans have died or been made sick from exposure to radioactivity. Water, air, livestock are contaminated. The move closes the book on a 65-year legacy of death and disease.

• “I don’t want to subject any more of my people to exposure, to uranium and the cancers that it causes,” said the president. “I believe we reinforced our sovereignty today.”



• The uranium prohibition is needed to address the deadly legacy of past uranium mining and processing on Navajo lands, and to protect the economy, environment and health of the Navajo people from future uranium mining and milling, the President said.

A National Sacrifice: Extraction and emissions mean jobs. Dr. John Fogarty has been quoted as saying, "Until there are real job-generating alternatives to poisoning ourselves, we'll continue to poison ourselves." But it's not just uranium extraction that's dirtied up America's Western landscape and sacrificed the health of rivers, aquifers and, of course, people. Emissions from coal-fired power plants have degraded air quality and reduced visibility across the West, notably at that most sacred of American environmental wonders, the Grand Canyon.

No doubt an energy and extraction boom stimulates the economy in areas where it's sorely needed, but at what cost? Does opening up old uranium mines and making claims on new mines to generate power truly be called ‘clean’ energy? Uranium mines closed down in the late 70s due to the scare of Three-Mile Island and the surfacing of evidence that nuclear energy is unpredictable and its waste is difficult and dangerous to contain—What makes it safer now than it was 30 years ago? Will farmers and private landowners be compensated by cash or other royalties for the Uranium discoveries made on their lands? What does Uranium mining mean to inhabitants in the West? What about the threat of terrorism? Are we not making ourselves more vulnerable to terrorist attacks by opening more Nuclear power plants? TV ads and the president tout coal as being cleaner and safer than before, but can we really afford to instate the costly technology needed to make coal clean? Are we really willing to jeopardize our public lands and world renowned majestic wonders for the sake of an out-dated energy resource? What guarantees can the government give us that the air quality in the US will not slip back to ‘Industrialization’ levels? Why aren’t we willing to put more funds into developing cleaner, safer energy technologies? Who is out to gain by reverting to these outdated methods?

Talking Points