Bush and Kerry: Competing Visions for U.S. Energy Policy

Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Fall 2004 by Hayes, David, Garman, David

JUNE 24, 2004*

WELCOME

Neil Numark: Good morning. Fm Neil Numark of Numark Associates and board member of the Sustainable Energy Institute (SEI). As many of you know, SEI is an independent, non-partisan educational institute interested in technological solutions to a cleaner energy future. And as a non-partisan energy group, we thought: what better role could we play in this election year than to bring together senior representatives of President Bush and Senator Kerry for an exchange of views and visions on energy options. David Garman and David Hayes are different kinds of representatives of the two candidates. secretary Garman participates as an official representative of the Bush administration. He is not affiliated with Bush/Cheney '04 and does not speak on behalf of the campaign. In contrast, David Hayes, a previous government official, as Deputy secretary of Interior under President Clinton, participates today on behalf of the Kerry campaign. But they are both Davids; there are no Goliaths here this morning, and hopefully you've left your slingshots at home. In fact, we hope to have a serious and constructive exchange of ideas today and perhaps can reach some common ground for moving forward with improving national energy policy and achieving a cleaner energy future regardless of who wins in November.

And I'm now pleased to introduce our very able moderator, Ira Flatow, who will in turn introduce the speakers and panelists. National Public Radio science correspondent and award winning journalist, Ira Flatow is the executive producer and host of Talk of the Nation: Science Friday. He has hosted popular science shows on TV and radio for 35 years. As NPR science correspondent from 1971 to 1986, Flatow covered science, health, technology, and the environment. His career has taken him to the Kennedy Space Center, Three Mile Island, and the South Pole. In one memorable NPR report, Flatow took former All Things Considered host Susan Stamberg into a closet to crunch Wint-O-Green Lifesavers in the dark and prove that they do indeed spark when crunched. His early reporting on the drug PCP was cited in congressional investigations into angel dust. Flatow's numerous TV credits include six years as host and writer for the Emmy award-winning Newton 's Apple on PBS, science reporter for CBS This Morning and cable's CNBC. He has talked science on many TV talk shows including Merv Griffin, Today, Charlie Rose and Oprah. He most recently hosted a four-part PBS series entitled Big Ideas and his most recent book, They All Laughed, tells the stories behind some of the world's most important inventions. He is president of TalkingScience, a non-profit organization exploring new and better ways of bringing science news to the public. Ira.

Ira Flatow: Thank you very much for those words. I feel like I'm at my own funeral when I hear those kind things being spoken. I'm going to lay out the ground rules for our, shall we call it a debate, a frank exchange of views or something like that. But before I do that I have a little bit of housekeeping to take care of: the coin flip. We have to do the coin flip about who is going to be speaking first, so if you'd like to call it, here's heads, like they do it in the Super Bowl and I'll throw it up and you call it in the air.

It is one without a state on it so it didn't go blue or red either way. It is heads, so you will have the opportunity to make your presentation first. And this is how the format will go: each of our panelists will make a presentation, each will get ten minutes to speak, and at the end we'll have a rebuttal. So, we'll have the first speaker for ten minutes, the second speaker ten minutes, and then each will have two minutes for rebuttal. And then we'll have a Q & A session with our journalists we've invited to participate, and we're waiting for one to show up. I'll introduce the ones who are here now.

Sitting on my left is John J. Fialka, a member of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau and author of three books: War by Other Means, the first documented study of economic espionage in America; hotel Horrors, a firsthand account of battles between press and the military during the Gulf War; and a third book, Sisters, Catholic Nuns and the Making of America, published in January by St. Martin's Press. He has a degree from Georgetown University Law Center, class of '65, and also a Columbia University graduate degree in the School of Journalism. During his newspaper career he has won several major awards for investigative journalism including the Raymond Clapper and the National Headliners awards. Thank you for being with us here today.

Elizabeth Shogren is a national correspondent for the LA. Times. She covers environmental issues for the L.A. Times in the Washington bureau. Her previous national beats include the White House, Congress, social policy, money and politics, and presidential campaigns. Before joining the Washington bureau in 1993 she covered the break-up of the Soviet Union for the LA. Times from its Moscow bureau starting in 1990. And prior to that, she worked as a freelance reporter based in Moscow starting in 1988, covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution of Prague in 1989, and has written for a variety of newspapers and magazines. We're waiting for Juliet Eilperin to show up. I think she'll be here. Due to the construction outside it is a little bit tough finding the building, so we'll wait for her to get here, and I'll introduce her then.