Editorial: The Energy Hog is grinning

Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006 | 12:32 p.m.

Creative minds in the Bush administration borrowed from Greek mythology and came up with a variation of the Minotaur two years ago to promote the president's publicly expressed views about energy conservation. Their creation was called "Energy Hog" and it featured the head of a pig instead of a bull on the body of a fiendish man.

Television, radio and Internet public service announcements were drawn and written around the repulsive creature, which delights in wasting energy without concern about the impact on the country. The announcements were clever but insincere, though, as federal funding for conservation programs have been dwindling over the past four years.

The president's 2007 budget, for example, handed to Congress on Monday, recommends cutting the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program by 9 percent. The federal government's weatherization program for low-income households is slated for a cut of about 33 percent.

Altogether, Bush's proposed budget cuts programs for energy efficiency by 18 percent, or $100 million, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit Washington-based group. And since 2002, the group says, such programs have been cut by a total of 32 percent when inflation is calculated.

These are cuts only the Energy Hog could love.