Media Compilation #4: Mr Bush has put US credibility on the line + The Feeling of a Coup + Don't Let Bush Torpedo The Climate Treaty! + Boycott of American products and MORE!

April 2, 2001

Media Compilation #4: A dirty business - Mr Bush has put US credibility on the line + The Feeling of a Coup + KYO-TOAD + THE BUSH WITHDRAWAL METHOD + Don't Let Bush Torpedo The Climate Treaty! + Boycott of American products + Protest against G.W. Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol against CO2 Emissions + Calling Al Gore + California wind-farms kept from generating power for public

Dear media person

American voters who were lurred into believing George W Bush's "compassionate" electoral promises, notably that he would work to significantly reduce the CO2 emissions emanating from the U.S., have in fact fallen into an am-Bush and are now stuck with a president that is actually "owned" by some of the worst corporate polluters of America and who is agressively moving the country against the worldwide currents of environmental sustainability, economic fairness and improved human rights standards. In so doing, he may also very well precipitate our civilization into a headlong rush towards ecoblivion and perhaps even a nightmarish world war.

Lots of people around the world are now really concerned and the mounting backlash against everything Bush is now coming to represent may hopefully prove in the end to be a determining factor in turning this electoral amBush into a stunning victory for progressive forces on Earth...

Thanks for reviewing the following material ;-)

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000

---

A dirty business - Mr Bush has put US credibility on the line

Special report: George Bush's America

Special report: global warming

Friday March 30, 2001

The Guardian

Suddenly, in the space of two short months, America, the "indispensable nation", begins to resemble the ultimate rogue state. George Bush's decision to trash the Kyoto global warming treaty is appalling. That it represents an enormous, possibly definitive setback for efforts to mitigate climate change goes almost without saying. America is now confirmed as the unrepentant outlaw, the dirty man of environmental politics.

The decision is doubly appalling for what it says about the new man in the White House. Mr Bush, clinging to his "national interest" credo, seems incapable of seeing the big picture. He does not grasp the basic truth that America's national interest is inextricably intertwined with the global interest. America, for all its dominance, is but a part of the world we share. America's consumers depend for their unsurpassed living standards on shared global resources. America's greenhouse emissions are not confined to American airspace. Nor is the US immune from the negative impact of its national profligacy and international climate change. By this blinkered action, Mr Bush strengthens suspicions that he is just not big enough for his job.

But most appalling of all is the message, taken alongside similarly short-sighted, self-centred actions in the fields of defence and diplomacy, that this Taliban-style act of wanton destruction sends around the world. Instead of leading the community of nations, Bush's America seems increasingly intent on confronting it. Instead of a shining city on a hill, the world sees a dark smokestack belching fumes. From a nation that began by heroically trumpeting its belief in universal values common to all mankind comes a devastatingly different, divisive and nationalistic jingle: we do what we want, for ourselves, regard less of the consequences for you. And if you don't like it, well, tough.

Is this message sent on purpose? In other words, does the Bush administration actually understand what it is doing? For look at the record so far. It has dangerously upset the strategic balance by proposing a new national missile defence system while scrapping another treaty, the key ABM accord with Russia. It has attacked Iraq while signalling elsewhere, notably in the Balkans, that it will reduce its commitment to shared security, especially through the UN. It has gone out of its way to antagonise Russia and done much to convince China that it must ready itself for war. Its economic policy has meanwhile merely stoked fears of a US-exported recession.

Bush's America has all but abandoned, for now at least, its leading role in the Middle East and gone a long way towards scuppering detente on the Korean peninsula. On a range of fronts, not least over Nato and trade, Washington is also shaping up for conflict with the EU. And now, to cap it all, ignoring the Stockholm summit's direct plea, and at the very moment the German chancellor is crossing the White House doorstep, it tells Europe that Peoria's pocketbook comes first, so take your fossil fuel fuss and stuff it.

If Mr Bush does not intend the alarm all this is causing internationally, then he is even more inept than commonly believed. Christine Whitman, his environment agency chief, told him this month that global warming "is a credibility issue for the US in the international community". She is right and he had better believe it. In the end, America, big though it be, cannot go it alone. It needs friends. But that even the oldest friendships have limits is a lesson Mr Bush has yet to learn. Humility is another. Wisdom may be too much to hope for.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/31/opinion/31LEWI.html

The Feeling of a Coup
(March 31, 2001)

By ANTHONY LEWIS

BOSTON -- We are learning something these days about the power of a willful president. Without a popular mandate, George W. Bush is making radical changes that will have long-term consequences for this country and the world. He is making them in a hurry, and for the moment there are no checks or balances to stop him.

Day after day headlines tell us of fundamental policy reversals. Mr. Bush spurns the global effort, going back to the first Bush presidency, to reduce global warming. He calls off talks with North Korea about its missiles, casting doubt on the whole attempt to ease relations between South and North. He proposes to rethink U.S. aid programs that help dismantle former Soviet nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

A string of Bush administration decisions has halted steps to protect the environment. Arsenic in drinking water, roads in national forests and so on: limits are going to be "restudied."

The reasons given for the environmental decisions have been almost insultingly unconvincing. Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said she was withdrawing the arsenic limit set in a Clinton administration regulation because it had not had "thorough review" in terms of "sound science." In fact, the limit was proposed by highly regarded scientists after extended study.

Mr. Bush, explaining to senators why he opposed the Kyoto protocol on global warming, spoke of the "incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change." Of course the science is incomplete on global warming, as it is on most subjects. But virtually all scientific experts support the theory that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to warming.

Contempt for public opinion as well as for science is evident in the environmental decisions. A striking example is what has happened to a Clinton regulation that prohibited road-building in about a third of the national forests.

The head of the Forest Service, Michael P. Dombeck, resigned the other day and sent a letter to his boss, Ann M. Veneman, the secretary of agriculture. He respectfully urged her not to abandon the ban on roads.

"Doing so," he wrote, "would undermine the most extensive multi- year environmental analysis in history, a process that included over 600 public meetings and generated 1.6 million comments, the overwhelming majority of which supported protecting roadless areas."

Mr. Dombeck's plea is not likely to move the Bush administration. It postponed the effective date of the road-building regulation for 60 days for further review. And in the meantime its lawyers have not defended the regulation in a lawsuit brought against it by the Boise Cascade timber company and the state of Idaho.

The American public would almost certainly vote to protect roadless parts of the national forests, as it would to reduce the amount of arsenic in water. But the public is not the audience that concerns Mr. Bush and his appointees. They are out to please the interests that supported and financed his campaign: timber companies, mining companies and the rest.

Nor is Mr. Bush moved by the arguments of respected Republican elders. As he ordered a review of the program for dismantling Soviet weapons, former Senator Howard Baker — whom he has named ambassador to Japan — was telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the program should be funded in full.

The Bush motto, a Washington quip has it, is "Do it my way or no way." That catches the willful quality of these first months. But there is more to the story than that.

This is the most radical administration in living American memory. I use the word deliberately. Today's right calls itself "conservative," but it is not that. Conservatives want to conserve. That is why Teddy Roosevelt started the national parks and the conservation movement. George W. Bush and his people are driven by right-wing ideology to an extent not remotely touched by even the Reagan administration.

And we haven't seen the half of it. As Mr. Dombeck said of opening the national forests to road-building, the decisions "will have implications that will last many generations."

All this from a man who ran as a "compassionate conservative," concealing his hard-edged ideology, and who could not get half the voters to vote for him even in that guise.

DAILY GRIST
29 Mar 2001
http://www.gristmagazine.com

2.
KYO-TOAD
European and Japanese governments reacted angrily yesterday to the
Bush administration's decision to abandon the Kyoto treaty on climate
change. Japan's ambassador for global environmental affairs, Kazuo
Asakai, said that "Japan will be dismayed and deeply disappointed" if
the U.S. rejects the agreement. Today, German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder is expected to appeal to Bush on behalf of European Union
countries to reconsider his decision, arguing that the U.S. has a
responsibility to act on climate change because it is the world's
largest producer of greenhouse gases. E.U. Environment Commissioner
Margot Wallstrom indicated she will continue to push for ratification
and enforcement of the treaty by 2002, with or without U.S.
participation. Meanwhile, U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd
Whitman is entering a meeting today with environmental ministers from
around the Western Hemisphere with no alternative policy on global
warming to discuss.

Washington Post, William Drozdiak and Eric Pianin, 29 Mar 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5959-2001Mar28.html

BBC News, Alex Kirby, 29 Mar 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1249000/1249446.stm

New York Times, Douglas Jehl, 29 Mar 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/29/science/29WARM.html

DAILY GRIST
30 Mar 2001

3.
THE BUSH WITHDRAWAL METHOD
Loud international criticism of President Bush's decision to withdraw
from the Kyoto treaty on climate change continued yesterday, and a
broad coalition of U.S. religious groups urged Bush to revisit the
decision. At a meeting in Montreal, environmental ministers from
North and South America canceled a long-planned statement on how to
proceed with implementing Kyoto and instead pressed U.S. EPA
Administrator Christie Todd Whitman to explain the U.S. position.
"Kyoto clearly is not perfect, but Kyoto is what we've got," said a
top Canadian negotiator, Paul Fauteux. Whitman tried to reassure the
officials, but had no alternative plan on global warming to offer
them. She left the two-day conference a day early, citing "other
commitments."

Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 30 Mar 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14005-2001Mar29.html

New York Times, Douglas Jehl, 30 Mar 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/national/30WARM.html

Toronto National Post, Jan Cienski, 30 Mar 2001
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20010330/517202.html

From: CorpWatch <corpwatch@corpwatch.org>
Subject: Don't Let Bush Torpedo The Climate Treaty!

CORPWATCH CYBER ACTION ALERT
March 29, 2001

TAKE ACTION!
Flood White House with faxes!
Tell President Bush not to torpedo the Kyoto Treaty on Global warming!

Last year the US blocked progress at negotiations in The Netherlands, now Texas oil-man, President George W. Bush wants to destroy the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Friends of the Earth and CorpWatch ask people around the world to flood the White House with protest faxes.

Let's show President Bush what climate change means and how much people are concerned about it.

Send your FREE FAX today!
http://www.corpwatch.org/action/2001/012.html

* The Global Warming President
http://www.corpwatch.org/climate/updates/2001/jkarliner1.html

* EU: Disgust over Bush's Kyoto Decision
http://www.corpwatch.org/news/2001/0077.html

* Climate Justice Facts
http://www.corpwatch.org/climate/background/2001/cjfactsheet.html

From: lolsligh
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001
Subject: Boycott of American products

Friends of the Earth and other environmental agencies are planning various campaigns to try and limit the damage that George Dubya Bush is trying to inflict. (The Toxic Texan)

Mike and I are researching information about American companies and products so that we might e-mail them to say that we are boycotting all American produced goods.

(For example if you buy Coca Cola or Pepsi, perhaps you could buy a British made brand instead, and avoid buying US fuel - Texaco particularly)

If everyone in the world who received an e-mail asking them to boycott just the above product did so, and also sent an e-mail to certain US companies, there would the most enormous response from the White House, I am certain. Even if people think "little me won't make a difference" EVERYONE makes a difference. Please look on packets of food and drink etc , and if it originates in the US, just find a British or alternative country's product instead.

Many, many years ago, I used to do some voluntary work for Greenpeace - at the time they had a small office above a kindergarden school in London. No membership, just a few keen supporters and some tee-shirts to sell. Little acorns, eh??? The few who began the environmental work, started a huge support system around the world. If you feel that you wish to support the campaigns, please check out the FoE and Greenpeace websites, and we will forward e-mail addresses if people wish to contact US companies.

Have a great weekend folks,

Lorraine

http://www.greenpeace.org
http://www.foeeurope.org/climate

From: dee.rimbaud
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001
Subject: Protest against G.W. Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol against CO2 Emissions

Dear Everyone,

This was forwarded to me about the US's refusal to endorse the Kyoto Protocol. In plain English, they refuse to cut down their CO2 emissions, because it's bad for business. Typically short-termist as the Americans are, they refuse to see the bigger picture that most of us - lay persons & specialists alike - can see. That is, it'll be bad for business in the long term, because there'll only be a wreck of a planet to do business on, and a good part of that will be under water.

Now, I'm not going to harp on here, and I'm not going to apologise for sending this. In six month's time I'm going to have a child coming into the world, and that makes me an activist. I want my child to inherit a world that is better than the one I inherited. It's a natural instinct. However, I can't see that happening, and I fear the world is only going to get worse, while blind, greedy fools like Bush are dangled from the strings of blind, greedy multinational corporations.

So, read this!And then, after reading this, you have several options.

1. Ignore it
2. Write to me and complain about being "spammed", which, given the seriousness of this e-mail, will not impress.
3. Write to Bush and complain, and probably be ignored.
4. Write to Bush, complain, inform the US government that you are going to boycott all American produce, and do so.
5. As number 4, but e-mail this, or your own version of it out to everyone on your mailing list.

Take a few minutes please and think about it.How long will it take you to e-mail this out to everyone on your mailing list?Not long at all!

Thanks for taking the time to consider this.

---

Rupert,

In this instance I don't object at all. I'll send this on to the Whitehouse for a government intern to log and ignore. But, I'm going to add my own wee personal bit... and that is simply that I will not knowingly buy a single American made product until the USA is a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol. I don't know if anyone will take note, but if they do, and if others agree to boycott American goods, then maybe we can strong-arm them into it. I received an e-mail recently from someone called The Angel of Light or some such, and it said that the only thing that capitalism understands is money and that we should therefore speak with our money... or somesuch. Anyway, the point of it is, the only way we can protest is to use the power of our money and to stop buying from those we disapprove of. If enough people threaten to stop buying American goods, and actually do so, it will have financial ramifications, and the US government will realise it is NOT in their financial interests to back out of the Koyoto Protocol. Bush and his cronies will never bow down to the "will" of the people, but they will if American businesses feel the financial pinch that can be caused by a boycott.

I'm replying to everyone on your mailing list, as I feel this is a valid point, and I hope that everyone will consider this. I'm normally politically apathetic, but things have changed for me big style.My partner is pregnant... and I dread to think of the state the world will be by the time my child-to-be gets to be my age.

So, let's have a boycott! And please, send this, or your own version of it, or whatever, to everyone on your mailing list. WE CAN HAVE AN AFFECT!

All the best

Dee

From: Rupert Loydell

I know it's uncool to send these things on, but this one seems to me about as important as it gets. I don't want Natasha to grow up in a world whose climate has been revised just so that Americans can carry on living like there's no tomorrow. What's the point of giving money for flood and famine relief in Mozambique and Bangladesh and then inviting something far worse just because we are too selfish or too stupid to change our lifestyles?

Rupert

===

Please cut and paste the message below into a new E-mail and send it to:

PRESIDENT BUSH:

president@whitehouse.gov

Please CC to: protest@foeeurope.org

or go to www.foeeurope.org/climate

===

Dear President Bush,

I call on you as President of the USA not to betray the Kyoto Protocol. The United States must live up to its commitment to the UN negotiations to prevent global warming. Sabotaging the Kyoto Protocol puts the USA into a position of environmental isolationism and makes it responsible for climate catastrophe.

The US has the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world. People around the world already faced with the first signs of climate change, suffering from floods and hurricanes, expect your country to be in the forefront of tackling climate change.

An enormous potential of creativity, innovation and efficiency is there to be harvested once we have decided to really reduce CO2 emission. If you fail to reverse your decision to kill the Kyoto Protocol, future generations will not forgive you.

President Bush, the science is proven and the international political will is there to tackle climate change. The US must join the world in tackling climate change.

Sincerely,

xxxxx

===

Background from Friends of the Earth:

Bush's campaign for presidency was backed and financed by major US oil giants, which campaigned against the international treaty to prevent global warming.

The US promised to cut their climate changing gases by 7% over 1990 levels before 2012 at the latest, but US emissions in fact rose by more than 10% between 1990 and 2000.

A White House spokesman said: "The president has been unequivocal. He does not support the Kyoto treaty." The Swedish Environment Minister described the move as "appalling and provocative".

For more information visit http://www.foeeurope.org/climate or e-mail protest@foeeurope.org

Friends of the Earth haven't said this, but my information is:

* The US has 4% of the world's population but produces 25% of its CO2.

* George W Bush actually campaigned on a stricter-against-CO2 line than either Al Gore (author of a respected book on environmentalism) or Ralph Nader (the Green presidential candidate). Gore and Nader between them polled substantially more votes than Bush. Subsequently, the White House has said that Bush's inclusion of CO2 in a list of pollutant gases was 'a mistake'.

* Bush received $39 million from US big business towards his election costs.

* Bush's father was the author of the famous statement: 'The American lifestyle is not negotiable.'

To my mind, Bush's refusal to curb CO2 emissions is almost like a declaration of war against posterity.

IF THERE WAS A WAY - SOME WAY! - TO BRING AL GORE BACK FROM LIMBO AND INTO THE WHITE HOUSE, WOULDN'T IT BE WONDERFUL!...

From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9081-2001Mar28.html

WASHINGTON POST

Calling Al Gore

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, March 29, 2001; Page A23

In September 1992, in the introduction to "Earth in the Balance," Al Gore noted that he was in the "middle of a campaign" whose outcome he could not know. "I do know," he added in the book's preface, "that whatever happens in this contest, the larger struggle will continue." If that's the case, Al, then where the hell are you?

That "larger struggle" is, of course, for a cleaner, better environment -- Gore's passion for all of his political career. Yet since he lost the presidential race, he has said nothing as the technical winner, George W. Bush, has set about dismantling many of the environmental measures that Gore as vice president and Bill Clinton as president implemented.

Just recently, for instance, the head of the Forest Service quit, sensing -- in the words of a former associate -- that the Bush administration wanted to move "in a different direction." That direction includes repealing a Clinton administration ban on road building in about 60 million acres of federal land. No roads, no logging, is the way these things work. It works the other way around, too.

It is not only in timber, however, that the Bush administration seems to be going the wrong way. The president broke his campaign commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions after, as sometimes happens, industry complained. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, one reason for the so-called greenhouse effect and thus global warming, is one of Gore's obsessions. He says he first learned of "the threat" as a college student and has stayed on the case ever since.

I confess that I am a little out of my depth when discussing such matters. Greenhouse effect? CO2? Puh-leeze! I have more than I can handle with McCain-Feingold.

So normally I take my cue from experts who treasure the environment and who, at the same time, seem reasonable. Gore has always been such a person and, indeed, if you go back to the most recent presidential debates, he raised the subject time and time again -- always to telling effect.

Now, though, silence. This is a peculiar characteristic of American politics. When a presidential campaign ends, it ends -- as if all issues have been settled. In a parliamentary system, the losing candidate would resume his seat in parliament and continue to play an important public role. Here, though, the losing candidate goes on vacation -- and seems never to return.

But why? Gore is needed. No one in the Democratic Party -- no one in either party -- speaks with his authority on environmental matters. Want to know whether Bush was right about maintaining the present standard for arsenic in water? Ask Gore. Want to know whether the president is right about mining? Ask Gore. Want to know, even, whether Bush is doing the right thing in Korea or Macedonia? Ask Gore. He knows these things. He really does.

Yet we hear nothing. This gives the impression that there is a distinction between political issues and policy. You fight about the former in a campaign and then shut up about the latter afterward. If Gore is going to try again in 2004, then he ought to open up on Bush now. So far, the most effective case against Bush's CO2 flip-flop was made in the leaked memos of Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency -- the Taliban Arts Council of the Bush administration.

The need for Gore only points out, I suppose, the shallowness of the Democratic leadership pool. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts has announced (at various dinner parties) that he's going to announce, but in the meantime he has nowhere near Gore's standing.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has already been out to Iowa, but aside from among his immediate family, he has almost no name recognition.

As for Joe Lieberman, he has resumed believing in the things he, passionately and with great moral certainty, once believed in -- including, of course, his own virtue. He, too, is considering a presidential race.

This leaves, if not a vacuum, then a vast, empty space -- particularly on the nightly news. No one but Gore can fill it. But he says nothing. And in the meantime, a president elected by Antonin Scalia makes environmental policy that no one -- not even Bush -- saw coming. (Read my lips, no more CO2.)

We can, Gore once wrote, act to save the environment or we can behave "as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in the balance."

I couldn't have put it better myself.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Note from Jean: It would be high time for a miracle to happen and Al to get the presidency he so much deserves...

See also "Bush Defends Arsenic Delay, Promises Reduction" at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11683-2001Mar29.html

From: http://www.smh.com.au/news/0103/31/world/world3.html

Sydney Morning Herald Saturday, March 31, 2001

It looks like a scene from The War of the Worlds. Hundreds of creatures with fans for heads stand at the edge of the Tehachapi Range, staring at the uninviting landscape of the Mojave Desert below.

Their blades whirr furiously as the wind screams off the desert plains and rushes over the mountains at gusts of up to 90km/h.

From a distance, it seems as if these propeller-headed aliens are advancing in rows, crawling down from the hills in battle formation to invade the sparsely populated plains below.

"It's quite a sight, isn't it?" asks Ed Duggan, as he battles to stay upright against the ferocity of the wind. "We'll be able to make plenty of power today."

Mr Duggan is the aliens' master - project manager at Oak Creek wind farm, one of California's largest "green" energy suppliers.

The creatures are his wind turbines - modern windmills that form part of a renewable energy system providing about 30per cent of California's electricity.

They are the sort of operations that could help keep the United States well within the goals of the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions if they were able to operate at, or near their capacity.

But, even as California suffers its most disastrous power shortage, the Mojave wind farms are prevented from generating anything like their maximum outputs because of a combination of bureaucratic cock-ups and big business conspiracies.

"You see those turbines over there," says Mr Duggan's mechanical specialist, Michael Burns, motioning towards a row of turbines that are not spinning.

"They aren't broken. They are turned off. We had to shut them off because Edison [the utility company] doesn't have the transmission capacity to take all our power."

Mr Burns does a quick mental calculation and says the farm could produce about 10 megawatts more per hour if it were allowed to operate to capacity.

"That is 240 megawatts a day, which is enough power generated every day on this farm alone to supply about a half a million homes with electricity to last them a month," he says.

The transmission lines connecting the eight wind farms in this part of the Mojave to the local power grid were built in the 1970s and '80s, at a time when the utility companies thought these alternatives to California's belching, gas-fired power plants were just another foolish environmentalist fad.

Southern California Edison and the other big power utilities did not see the use in spending tens of millions of dollars to upgrade the lines. As far as they were concerned, the wind farms would all be blown over within a few years.

They were wrong. Quantum leaps in wind turbine technology and handsome tax credits offered by the State Government to encourage investment in alternative energy sources inspired a rush of wind farm development, bringing online bigger, more sophisticated and significantly more efficient operations.

By the early 1990s, the Mojave operations were generating more electricity than the Edison lines could carry. Plans were formulated to increase transmission capacity, but utilities would always balk when it came to putting up the capital to get work started.

Until a few months ago, Southern California Edison was paying the farms what it called "curtailment fees" not to run a certain number of turbines. The wind farmers were happy because the amounts they were paid not to generate electricity were the same as they would have received if the turbines were feeding power into the system.

Edison flicked the switch on the deal in November, when the energy crisis first peaked. Suddenly, the utilities stopped paying the turbine operators for making electricity and stopped paying them for not making electricity.

Oak Creek wind farm is continuing to operate by drawing on its own cash reserves and it estimates that it will be able to remain in business for about another eight months, if the power crisis lasts that long. Other, smaller operations are already beginning to close because they cannot meet running costs.

This week, California's Public Utilities Commission approved a record 46 per cent rise in electricity charges to customers to help cover the estimated $US14billion ($28 billion) debt racked up by Southern California Edison and its main rival, Pacific Gas & Electric, because they have been forced to buy wildly expensive power from neighbouring grids to make up their own shortfalls.

The State Governor, Gray Davis, a Democrat who once had illusions of seeking the US presidency, ran a mile from the price rise this week, leaving it to his bureaucracy to break the bad news.

The utilities commission has tried to sell the price increase as a necessary evil, arguing that it is the only way to keep the utilities afloat and to avert more frequent and more disruptive enforced black-outs.

Not surprisingly, it has been a tough sell.

Angry consumers have organised rallies in the streets of several big Californian cities, including the State capital, Sacramento, to voice their outrage over the action.

That unrest, though, could play directly into the hands of the consumers' political targets - including Governor Davis and President George Bush.

Mr Bush came to power with a platform of increasing significantly America's ability to produce its own energy sources, including oil and electricity.

Under the long-held political verity of "tough times demand tough measures", Mr Bush is now using the popular dissent over California's power problems and the threat, whether real or politically contrived, of such a crisis spreading nationally to justify his decision to turn his back on Kyoto and side with his big business allies in the oil, gas and electricity industries.

Meanwhile, back on the edge of the Mojave Desert, hundreds of fan-headed aliens are sitting idle when they could be spinning out enough power to carry California out of its crisis.

"If people knew there wouldn't be a power shortage if all the wind farms could work at capacity, then something might just happen to get the lines built to carry our power," Michael Burns says.

"The way things are, it just don't make any sense."

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