Seeking to improve a tarnished environmental image, the White House last week released its response to the Kyoto treaty. The plan embraces a go-slow approach to reducing 'greenhouse gas' emissions - responsible for potentially devastating changes in global temperatures - and links emission reductions to the economy's status.

Critics contend the plan will have virtually no effect on curbing emissions. Analyses indicate that the plan:

• seeks to reduce greenhouse gas discharges relative to GDP ('emissions intensity') by 18% over the next decade. Yet emissions intensity fell 17.4% over the last decade even without voluntary or mandatory caps.
  
  
• would result in U.S. emissions 30% above 1990 levels in 2012.
  
  
• would contribute to a lopsided subsidy ratio of 'dirty' to 'clean' power of over 2:1.

The White House says that conservation is only half the energy equation and promotes domestic production as the path to energy independence. But analysts note that the U.S. possesses a mere 3% of oil reserves yet consumes 25% of all production - an imbalance not likely to be offset without mandatory measures to curtail demand.

Draft versions of an upcoming Senate bill emphasize conservation and 'clean' power and would raise national fuel economy. The administration backs a House plan that includes billions in breaks and new subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and calls for stepped-up exploration on public land, including offshore sites and the Arctic Refuge.

Some say Enron demonstrates the inordinate power that corporations wield over policy decisions. Vice President Cheney's now infamous list of meeting attendees could potentially reveal the political pull that energy giants possess in lobbying for and receiving big breaks. Energy titans say deregulation cuts consumer costs, but last spring's California energy price spike indicates that they gain far more than consumers from unregulated markets.

How can we strengthen our energy independence while simultaneously reducing harmful emissions? What - or who - stands in the way of adopting new technologies that provide power without environmental calamity?