JOINING numerous members of President George W. Bush鈥檚 cabinet who are quitting for greener pastures is Spencer Abraham, head of the Department of Energy. Given the state of affairs in that department, it鈥檚 hard to blame him.
The Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress tried and failed to agree an energy policy for the country last year. Democrats and Republicans bickered over everything, and the Department of Energy (DOE) was left to watch as partisan politics guaranteed that the world鈥檚 biggest energy consumer would have no guiding energy policy.
This year will see another attempt. But in the meantime, the department has been hit from a different quarter. The state of Washington, home to the nation鈥檚 largest nuclear waste dump, has filed three lawsuits declaring that it will not accept any more shipments of waste from the DOE鈥檚 old weapons-building sites around the country, at least not until the state gets more say in how the waste is disposed of. Should it prevail, other states where the radioactive legacy of the cold war sits in leaking tanks and barrels could try the same strategy 鈥� declaring 鈥渘o more in our backyards鈥�. That would leave the DOE sitting on millions of gallons of waste with nowhere to bury it. Given that most of it has a half-life of thousands of years, it will take a few more secretaries of energy before the department will be rid of it.
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SOMETIMES it鈥檚 better to be lucky than good. A brief history of NASA鈥檚 ambitious plans for space exploration provides a case in point. After flailing around for years trying to redefine itself, NASA finally came up with something of a plan in January 2004. It decided it would establish a base on the moon, and use that as a stepping stone for sending astronauts to Mars. The Bush administration endorsed these goals, but public reaction was lukewarm. Most people seem to think going to Mars would be nice, but are scared by the likely price tag.
Not to worry. Thanks to NASA鈥檚 magical accounting methods, the new plans could be accomplished with only modest budgetary increases. Reprogramming money that the agency already had would do the trick, agency officials insisted. The snag is that Congress seemed unlikely to want to provide even modest increases, given that the US is in an era where tax cuts are eating into revenues and the aftermath of Iraq is devouring more and more federal dollars.
Then NASA got lucky. After the state of Texas redrew the boundaries of its congressional districts, NASA鈥檚 Johnson Space Center wound up in the district of Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress. DeLay made certain that even if other agencies were hurting for money, NASA would get the $16.2 billion it said it needed to begin its plans for the moon and Mars.
Of course, NASA officials would say they are good as well as lucky.
