CORE fights ‘energy racism’

July 28, 2008
Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, has come out swinging against “elitist” environmentalists, politicians, and the nonprofit foundations that fund them for promoting “energy racism” by cutting off access to fossil fuels in the US and pushing up energy prices.

Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, has come out swinging against “elitist” environmentalists, politicians, and the nonprofit foundations that fund them for promoting “energy racism” by cutting off access to fossil fuels in the US and pushing up energy prices.

“They cause poor families to lose their homes. They make life tougher for families who’ve worked, struggled, and sacrificed to join the middle class. Then they throw out crumbs that make us beggars at the American banquet,” Innis said in his book Energy Keepers-Energy Killers: The New Civil Rights Battle, published by Merril Press. “The fight over energy is the critical civil rights battle of our era,” said Innis. “Simply put, energy transforms the civil rights enshrined in our Constitution into civil rights we enjoy in reality.”

Federal lands belong to all US citizens and are supposed to be developed as well as preserved. However, Innis charges, “The reality is that these lands are held for affluent, highly educated, white, politically savvy environmentalists” who spend “enough money to support dozens of poor families for years, pressuring our government to post those resources into energy graveyards and turning thousands of hard-working blue collar families into beggars.”

With the same passion that he once fought segregation, Innis said, “We have a right to sit at the energy lunch counter–to not be forced to sit at the back of the energy bus.” He said, “We have to reframe the debate. It’s not about the environment.... The real debate is over civil rights–yours and mine–and civil wrongs, the ones committed by energy killers.”

Energy killers

People “who produce energy for everything we do, everything we buy, everything we dream of,” Innis designates as energy providers. The “Bull Connor” energy killers, he said, “are people who try to stop them: activists and politicians against oil and gas drilling, against coal mining, against nuclear power, against all energy production, choking off the abundant, reliable, affordable American resources we need.”

Opponents accuse oil companies of price gouging. But the “nearly 50¢ in taxes” on a gallon of gasoline is “government price gouging,” Innis said. Stacks of “dubious environmental rules” that delay or prevent energy production is “regulatory price gouging.” Placing off limits federal land “with years worth of oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and other energy resources” is “environmentalist price gouging.” Legislation “that forces us to use politically correct ‘renewable’ energy like wind and solar that’s expensive, unreliable, land-gobbling, and unable to produce enough fuel or electricity for a modern society” is “ideological price gouging,” he said.

Independent oil companies are particularly vulnerable to activists’ attacks. “These good, hard-working people are being marginalized, demonized, and destroyed by self-centered eco-bigots who look down on them as less deserving, less than human, in fact–as a despised minority, and I know what that’s like,” said Innis.

He faults Al Gore for his “mansion” that “consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year” and for the use of carbon offsets to buy his way into “climate heaven.” He criticizes Hillary Clinton for campaigning in private jets that emit more carbon dioxide in 2 hours “than the average American family generates in a year.” He knocks Barack Obama for claiming climate change is the biggest threat facing black American families today. “Not child welfare mothers ‘raising’ illegitimate children in fatherless families. Not substandard, incompetent schools ruled by incivility and violence, and turning out kids who can’t read or do math. Not intolerable unemployment levels among black males. Not uneducated youths suited for gangs but not jobs. Climate change,” Innis said.

Meanwhile, “rich white retirees, wealthy celebrities, and fancy-free heirs living on daddy’s money” are locking up key energy resources in the US. “They can’t stand seeing drilling rigs, oil and gas fields, mines, timber cutting, or even ranching operations, no matter how small, in ‘their’ backyards,” he said.

“Sometimes I think environmentalists would rather see you jobless, homeless, or even dead than to support fossil fuel use, even the best, cleanest, and most abundant,” said Innis. “The fear and loathing that some have for oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power is no excuse for us, our policy makers, or our courts to ignore energy reality and widen our energy gap by promoting renewable illusions and closing off access to the real energy we need.”