Congress’s Rapid Energy Depletion Bill

While the pundits analyze the fossil fuel subsidies and nuclear industry giveaways in the energy bill only just signed by President Bush, they miss the overall. From the standpoint of ecology, the primary strategy behind the bill is a simple one: Increase the rate of drawdown in order to shore up a world economic and social system that is suffering gravely from the effects of a global environmental meltdown.

Drawdown, you may recall, is one of two strategies that animals use to obtain food and other resources they need. Drawdown is a strategy of drawing down finite resources in a way that temporarily increases the carrying capacity of a given area. (The other strategy is takover, as in taking over land, forest and other renewable resources for one’s own use.)

Resource Insights