Excessive oil use creates harmful effects

Virgil Wright

WASHINGTON — With America needing a 12-step program to kick its addiction to oil, the Congressional Black Caucus used a recent energy forum to outline the road to recovery.

“The answer is very simple,” said U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. “Each and every one of us has to get involved. Many members of our community are suffering, unable to separate the needs for heating and eating.”

The Houston congresswoman, a former energy attorney in the heart of America’s oil patch, joined fellow Black Caucus members and energy experts at a National Town Hall Meeting in Washington, D.C., to outline ways the average energy consumer can help wean America from its dependence on fossil fuels and the deadly consequences of global warming.

Because two-thirds of all oil in America goes into cars and trucks in the form of gasoline and diesel fuels, the quickest way to cut oil consumption and reduce price pressure, short of buying a more fuel-efficient vehicles, is to adopt more conservative driving habits.

By reducing speed, turning off the engine at stoplights, stepping on the gas pedal gently from a standing position and following better maintenance practices, including fully inflating tires and changing motor oil and oil filters more frequently, motorists can cut gasoline consumption as much as 40 percent.

“We’re being held over an oil barrel by foreign governments,” said Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, a national coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups promoting energy independence. The nation cannot afford to wait around while energy policies get crafted in secret White House meetings held in cahoots with Big Oil, he said.

“The use of oil has severe environmental impacts,” said Ringo, who also chairs the National Wildlife Federation. “It discharges CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming” and other harmful effects on the planet.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., echoed Ringo’s call for a “diverse energy portfolio,” citing advances in biofuels, particularly ethanol produced from corn and wood waste, to cut oil imports, which now make up 60 percent of all the oil consumed in the U.S.

“We have an immoral war in Iraq costing our community $300 billion,” said the Oakland congresswoman. “Wouldn’t we be better off spending that money on alternative energy development and helping the poor?”

Joseph P. Kennedy II, a former Massachusetts congressman who now heads nonprofit Citizens Energy Corporation, said the federal government has failed to increase energy assistance to the poor in spite of astronomic rises in fuel costs over the last several years.

“Middle-class families spend about five percent of their household budget on energy costs, but the poor put out as much as 20 percent, but there is no offset to poor families to make up for the skyrocketing rise,” said Kennedy, whose company provides low-cost heating oil to the poor and the elderly in a number of cold-weather states.

“Our national energy policy should include provisions to use increased royalties for oil and gas development on federal lands by private energy companies to provide assistance to the poor,” he said. Kennedy also called on the Black Caucus to join him in writing energy companies to set aside a portion of their record profits to help those least able to shoulder the burden of high energy prices.

Robert Harris, vice president of the San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the nation’s largest utilities, said more activism by African Americans is needed to ensure more sensitive environmental and assistance policies by regulated utilities.

“It’s a shame that we don’t see more black faces in front of utility commissioners in California and other states advocating for the kinds of initiatives we’re talking about today,” said Harris, citing the need for switching electricity production from oil and gas to solar, wind, and geothermal sources.

Joyce Hayes-Giles, vice president of Detroit-based DTE Energy, said aggressive outreach is needed to low-income families to promote home-energy conservation and reduce the consumption of expensive fossil fuels used to keep warm. “We need to work with human service agencies to come up with innovative programs to help everyone, but especially the poor in this time of rising prices.”