Opinion

<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   HAVE YOUR SAY Feel strongly about something? Share it with the community by writing a letter to the editor. You’ll need to include your name, address and daytime phone number. (We’ll only publish your name and hometown.) We reserve the right to edit letters, but if you keep yours to 250 words or less, we won’t ask you to shorten it. If your letter is published, please wait 30 days before submitting another. Send it to: E-mail: letters@heraldnet.com Mail: Letters section The Herald P.O. Box 930 Everett, WA 98206 Fax: 425-339-3458 Have a question about letters? Contact Carol MacPherson (cmacpherson@heraldnet.com or 425-339-3472).   Published: Wednesday, February 7, 2007 State lawmakers can fight big oil's raid on our wallets John Burbank / Syndicated Columnist Exxon's profits made the news Friday - $4.5 million an hour for the past year. By Monday, it was old news. After all, aren't we supposed to give corporations a free hand and get out of the way? But what happens when those corporations suck money out of the local economy? Just in the past month, Washington businesses and citizens have handed over close to $1 billion to the oil and gas industries. It doesn't go to building our own renewable energy resources, it doesn't go to energy conservation, it doesn't go to better transit. It goes out of our state and out of our economy. Exxon is the fifth largest producer of crude oil in the world, right after Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mexico and Venezuela. When political and economic uncertainty push up crude oil prices, the money supports both the medieval fiefdoms of the Middle East and the global behemoths of oil addiction - Exxon, Shell and British Petroleum. After breaking $76 a barrel for crude in August, the current price of $57 is accepted as no cause for concern. But it is a great cause for profit by Exxon. Who benefits from the war in Iraq? Certainly not the Iraqi people, and not the U.S. servicemen and women stationed there, injured there and killed there. In 2002 crude oil prices hovered around $30 a barrel. Since the war began, these prices have climbed and climbed. Right now they are about double the pre-war price. As for Exxon profits, they have sailed from a mere $11 billion in 2002 to $40 billion in 2006. We don't have to be captive to the oil industry. We elected our legislators to stare down the corporate lobbyists in Olympia and actually attend to the people's interests. They have some attending to do. Consider House Bill 1303. This bill is sponsored by more than one-third of the House of Representatives, including Brian Sullivan, D-Mukilteo, Mike Sells, D-Everett, John McCoy, D-Tulalip, Al O'Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace, John Lovick, D-Mill Creek and Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish. It would enable cellulosic ethanol facilities to gain start-up funding, establish biodiesel and ethanol refilling stations along I-5 and I-90, and create the Clean Energy Incentive Account to finance these projects with an initial appropriation of $39 million. HB 1303 requires the state to reduce its fossil fuel use to 25 percent below 2006 levels by the year 2020. That's 13 years from now. By then, incremental advances will be overwhelmed by environmental damage. If we are serious about saving our quality of life, our shorelines and the waters of Puget Sound, we have to get busy now. That is certainly what Rep. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle, has in mind. He has introduced House Bill 1510, co-sponsored by Steve Conway, D-Tacoma and Mary Helen Roberts, D-Edmonds, calling for the community reinvestment of oil company windfall profits. His bill would redirect $600 million a year of these profits into Washington state investments for mitigation of energy costs and the development of renewable energy sources. That's about 5 percent of the total revenues that are exported out of our state into the oil companies' pockets. With this $600 million, the community reinvestment act would lower business taxes by 2.5 percent in recognition of the increased cost of energy to businesses. It would also put $100 million into the Energy Freedom Fund, to develop renewable energy crop sources and energy production in our state. It would retrofit diesel school buses and other government fleets with clean burning engines. It would put about $85 million a year into incentives to private businesses and public entities for energy retrofits, solar panels and energy self-sufficiency. It would fund mitigation of heating and transportation costs for schools and local governments, and it would invest $250 million a year in rapid rail and mass transit, like the Sounder trains between Tacoma, Everett and Seattle. It is an interesting concept - redirecting the windfall profits of the oil companies to build a sustainable energy future and preserve our quality of life in Washington. It is a plan for peace, built on the dividends of war reaped by the oil giants. Will the Legislature take this on? Or is our government supposed to sit on its hands when faced with highway robbery? John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.

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