Twenty-two years ago, on this day, January 29 2001, newly-installed President George “Dubya” Bush announces an “energy taskforce”
The National Energy Policy Development Group was a group, created by Executive Order on January 29, 2001, that was chaired by Vice President Richard Cheney. The group, commonly referred to as the “Cheney Energy Task Force,” produced a National Energy Policy report in May 2001. [1] In a cover note to George W. Bush, Cheney wrote that “we have developed a national energy policy designed to help bring together business, government, local communities and citizens to promote dependable, affordable and environmentally sound energy for the future.” [2] (pdf) The composition of the task force, according to the report, was confined to government officials.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cheney_Energy_Task_Force
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that Bush had won the Presidency (if not the actual election – but, you know, details) with the help of his Dad’s mates on the Supreme Court. The power behind the throne, Dick Cheney, was clearly interested in coal and nuclear, not this carbon emissions reductions nonsense. So, there had to be a process for backtracking on loose talk of regulating carbon emissions that had been made during the campaign. A “taskforce” should do the job…
What I think we can learn from this
Taskforces are absolute catnip to liberals.
They function either as “cooling out the mark” – the way that a promise can be broken (“we consulted independent experts.. Changed circumstances… therefore…”), or as a way of delaying (perhaps indefinitely) any actual ACTION on promises, while offering CV tokens and grin-and-grip opportunities to would-be trouble-makers, who become obsessed with maintaining their spot at the table, rather than actually keeping tabs on what is (not) being done, or building political power outside ‘the Beltway’/’Westminster’ etc.
What happened next
Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, and started mangling the language in the direction of absurd techno-fantasies. True leadership.
Cheney fought two legal challenges against releasing the records of this Taskforce. Of course he did.
https://www.npr.org/2007/07/18/12067186/cheneys-energy-task-force-records-revealed
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.