Sapping the Energy of the People

Re “Nation’s Energy Needs Collide With a Way of Life,” May 19: To increase energy supplies, the Bush administration wants to destroy the land and pump aquifers dry to produce natural gas in Wyoming and corn-fed gasohol in the Midwest. Like Congress, the media once worked for the country’s good, but hush money killed that.

Clean water may disappear before the world’s oil, which will be gone in about 50 years. I do not want to leave the planet in this mess for my granddaughter. Unfortunately, I do not have a big voice, and the media, which could do honest investigative reporting in the interest of future generations, no longer talk. Funny what money can’t do.

Roger Newell

San Diego

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Each week I read a new article regarding the Bush administration’s blatant assault on the environment--all in the name of providing energy for the American people. Recently the Bush administration was slapped by a judge for pushing for cheaper coal-producing practices that were ruining the waterways of West Virginia (which the people of that state have been fighting). Now it is supporting the rape of parts of Montana and Wyoming for natural-gas extraction.

While I know we need natural gas, it is possible to obtain it in a more environmentally sensitive way. Some of these ranchers have made money from the extraction while others have had their water supply and land ruined. The people who have suffered under heavy-handed natural-gas extraction are spending thousands of dollars fighting the government to protect their land. What happened to the government being for the people, not against? Where is the governor of Wyoming when his people need him? How long can the ground sustain that kind of water loss?

These ranchers in Wyoming are probably the ones who voted for President Bush because he was viewed as a good ol’ boy. What they did not realize was that they are not a part of this club. Only the wealthy energy people who paid to put Bush and Vice President Cheney in the White House are part of that club. I can’t wait for the General Accounting Office investigation of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham’s energy-plan meetings (along with Cheney) and the Enron investigation to be completed, to see who has been sleeping with Kenneth Lay.

Diane Haun

Culver City