Editorial: Why the secrecy on energy?

Friday, March 29, 2002 | 5:11 a.m.

Go back 10 years, go back 20 years, go back 30 years. Now, try to find any debate, vote, or correspondence on the federal level having to do with energy that is not heavily weighted toward fossil fuels and the nuclear industry. The search will be fruitless. The federal government pays lip service to notions of conservation and alternative energy sources while the big industries, with their big money, get all the access. Ensuing legislation -- such as the Clean Air Act -- can sometimes be nettlesome, but overall for the past decades oil and nuclear power have driven federal policies on energy.

A history of questionable policies can be more easily accepted if today's leaders are learning from the past and adjusting current policy. Unfortunately that's not happening under the Bush-Cheney administration. Same old, same old is the expression springing to mind. Documents relating to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which met secretly last year, were released last week, and all 11,000 pages showed an unchanged devotion to the views of oil and nuclear industry representatives. The documents included policy statements submitted by environmental groups such as the Wilderness Society, but none of their representatives had a chance to meet face to face with the likes of Cheney or Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Such access was reserved for representatives of the American Coal Co., the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Nucle ar Energy Institute, and other power and oil and gas companies.

The documents, by the way, were not released willingly. Cheney has been using his considerable power to fight public disclosures about his energy task force. The papers, many looking like letters home from World War II with huge parts of them blacked out by censors, were released only after lawsuits filed by two environmental groups. Another 15,000 pages were withheld completely. Why the secrecy? Can it be that the Bush-Cheney-Abraham energy policy owes more to the industry than the citizens?