For the week of June 27 - July 3, 2001

Cheney still unplugged on value of conservation

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

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Had Vice President Dick Cheney been in Sun Valley last week, he would have been wiser for hearing speakers at groups discussing energy issues.

You remember Cheney — President Bush the Junior’s mentor and former multimillionaire international oil executive, who airily dismisses energy conservation as little more than a "personal virtue."

Well, virtually every speaker at meetings of the Idaho Water Users Association and Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (hardly made up of liberals) emphasized energy conservation as essential — not merely a "personal virtue" ¾ in dealing with energy shortages.

No less than Jan Packwood, the CEO of Idaho Power, provided an illustration: in less than four months, he said, conservation through energy buybacks and other actions in Idaho had saved the equivalent of a medium-size electric generating plant’s power generation.

Cheney’s patronizing attitude about conservation has a possible explanation: the man has spent his adult life since 1969 living high on the hog on the federal payroll and briefly as a multimillionaire oil executive working for President Nixon, as President Ford’s chief of staff, as a five-term congressman from Wyoming, as President Bush the Elder’s Defense secretary, as CEO of an international oil services firm, now as Vice President of the United States.

In those heady jobs, conservation is a word rarely spoken, and as an oilman, consumption, not conservation, made him worth upward of $30 million.

If Cheney seems out of touch, his protégé, George W., is even more unplugged.

New polls show a majority of Americans believe President Bush isn’t concerned with issues that affect their lives, especially the environment. Even Republicans in Congress last week rejected Bush’s plan to drill for oil off the Florida coast.

Bush’s failings are not just because Cheney has a tin ear and is whispering bum advice to Bush. Remember how candidate Bush almost boasted not to have read much, that he rarely watches TV news and then after becoming president, his mouthpiece, Ari Fleischer, proudly announced polls were not part of White House interests?

So, what else to expect of a president who drifted through college, admits partying until he was 40, concedes he doesn’t read much as an adult, doesn’t watch TV news, doesn’t read polls and relies on advice of a vice president who glorifies consumption over conservation during energy shortages?

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Some jobs in life seem so utterly undemanding as to have few takers.

Such may be the feelings of two young student-age women who’ve been painting Sun Valley Company’s log fence along Sun Valley Road for weeks.

I guarantee they’ll never forget this work. They’ll even remember it with pride years from now when inspiring their children with examples of the work ethic and importance of mundane jobs.

One summer job in my early teens in Florida was riding a bicycle through the pre-dawn darkness to Milam Dairy, west of Miami International Airport, grabbing a bottle of fresh milk, and heading for pastures where I spent the entire day alone, with no escape from the sun, chopping down bull thistles with a scythe.

It must’ve been important to my life. Otherwise, why would I remember it so vividly?

 

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