Bush proposes producing and burning more fossil fuels, and resurrecting nuclear power. The plan calls for drilling in environmentally sensitive areas like the Rockies and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, increasing tax breaks for oil, coal and gas production, and forcing electric transmission lines on communities that do not want them. At first, Cheney scorned conservation as "perhaps a personal virtue," nothing more, but after public uproar they included token tax breaks for hybrid cars. (Since conservation and renewables are NOT in Bush’s budget or tax bills, they are purely window dressing.)

Bush shows no awareness that burning fossil fuels is changing our global climate to the detriment of our children and their children, and no interest in the promise of our REAL energy future: wind power, solar power, fuel cells, energy efficiency and changes in development and transportation patterns. Turning to nuclear power to "solve" our energy problems is like taking up crack to quit smoking. How can they promise to safeguard the radioactive waste for 100,000 years, when they can’t even think beyond the next two-year election cycle?

When exactly did conservatives lose interest in conserving? How come they favor the liberal use of polluting, finite fossil fuels? And why do they venerate the "free market" except when it produces different outcomes than they prefer? Think about it: higher energy prices are already bringing more generating capacity on line, so why does Big Oil need more "incentives" and lower emissions standards to increase production? As for nuclear power, the free market long ago rejected it, and it only survives on goverment life support. Congress is even now discussing renewing the Price-Anderson Act, which limits industry liability in case of catastrophic accident to a ridiculously low sum, since private insurance companies rightly refuse to insure nuclear.

Bush and Company have used their manufactured "energy crisis" to raid the cookie jar. Drilling the last untouched part of Alaska’s north coast would produce no oil for 10 years, and even then the oil will go to Japan. The only thing that will help California (and the rest of us in the West) this Summer is conservation and price caps on wholesale electricity costs, which Bush rejects out of hand. Why don’t they investigate the illegal price-gouging and corporate collusion bleeding California dry? Well, one of California’s major suppliers is Houston-based Enron, the nation’s 18th biggest corporation. Enron CEO Ken Lay is (WHAT A COINCIDENCE!) the single largest contributor to the political campaigns of President Bush. Enron helped Houston leapfrog Los Angeles to become the smoggiest city in America. Will Bush help out California (which voted for Gore) or let his country-club buddies get richer through their domestic OPEC-like cartel? Take one guess.

The last honest President, Jimmy Carter, called us "the most wasteful nation on Earth." He urged us to buy more efficient cars, turn down the thermostat, and seek alternative fuel sources. In return, we ran him out of town on a rail. Now we are 20 years farther down a dead-end path. We can and must change course. We need to pursue a clean energy future with the urgency and commitment of the Manhattan Project , because our national security is as much at stake now as it was then.

Eric Fried is co-chair of the Poudre Valley Green Party

on the web @ www.pvgreens.org