Don Young (U.S. Representative, AK)

There have been a number of energy bills that have been rolling through Congress or not rolling through. Which bill did you nickname the American Energy Suicide Act?

It’s the cap-and-trade act.

This is a suicide act for America. There’s no way this country can get back on its feet economically, unless we can ignore that bill totally and I call it the Wheel of Energy. And they’re trying to make the wheel with only three spokes in it. They want solar power, they want geothermal power, maybe, which I agree, that all of those are good sources, solar, wind, everything. Both those are only spokes in this wheel, and we’re still going to have to have fossil fuels. This bill that was passed out of the House does not encourage nor even acknowledge the need for fossil fuels, and there’s where they’re missing the boat.

And I say it’s suicide because they’ll drive this country into a depression, jobs will not be available, and we’ll not be competitive globally. So, I call it that, and I still think that’s the way it’s gonna go. Luckily, the Senate is not gonna pas that bill. They may pass something down the road, but it won’t be like that.

And then you had nicknamed another bill the No More Excuses Energy Act.

Well, what it is about is producing. If my goal in this whole program, I’ve been involved in energy ever since the trans-Alaskan pipeline. We had an embargo, and that was back in 1973. We had an embargo, this country was in dire shape, and for those watching the show, you may not remember this, but people were in line, they were shooting one another to get gasoline, there was no gasoline. A barrel of oil was about $4 a barrel, but they cut us off. And we didn’t learn much from that.

We actually had decreased our ability to produce fossil fuels domestically. And now, we’re importing about 68 percent of our fossil fuel now is imported from countries such as Canada. Venezuela is not. The Middle East we are dependent on those countries to supply us with fossil fuels. It’s a bleeding of our economy. Every dollar we send abroad is used against us. And I’m saying we have that ability within the United States, offshore and onshore, that they can provide the energy to keep this country strong.

Energy is the secret to any economy. The abundance of cheap energy’s what made this country great. First it was hydropower on the East Coast. Believe it or not, our ability to use water to turn wheels, to take and grind our grain and to build our iron products. And then we discovered oil and coal on the East Coast. And we built this nation because of the abundance of eh-of cheap energy. You go o the West, we had hydro, which is very, very important, because it’s the only real renewable energy that provides the necessary units of power that take and generate a great economy.

We stopped doing all that. We’re not doing it. So, our economy’s under a direct threat right now. It’s not only through the unrest in the Mideast we are bleeding dollars that get sent abroad when we could be utilizing them just in the United States.

Some people say that their intent with the Waxman-Markey bill was to shift government support to get more renewables on more equal footing. So, they feel as though they’re trying to even the playing field.

I don’t think that’s really what they’re trying to do. This is all about climate change. This has nothing to do about really the economy. They talk about new jobs, but they don’t produce the jobs. In all the windmills we have today and all the solar plants we have today, we have less than 1 percent of the power we need to take and, again, energize the economy of this country. And I think they being a little disingenuous on this issue totally. If they had recognized the use of fossil fuels and the need for it and again, remember the wheel of energy.

I will support any form of energy that creates a source of energy and power for this country. But you can’t delusion yourself and say it’s gonna be solved by wind and solar all these other exotic fuels. It doesn’t produce the power necessary to take and energize the economy of this country. And again, I go back to the $500 billion we’re gonna be sending abroad to buy fossil fuels to keep running. You can’t replace that with wind and solar and such. It’s just not there. You might do with hydrogen someday. That, I’m not sure.

But that’s a long ways down the road. Every time we get into that field it sorta breaks down. So, I’m just saying, they wanna stop, it’s a three-spoke wheel. The exotic fuels and not the fuels that drove this nation all these years.

How do you get to the point where solar or wind is going to produce more than 1 percent unless we start giving more of a boost?

But we are giving them boost from borrowed money. We’re not utilizing dollars that belong to us. I had a proposal to the Congress that take-Anwar is a big issue. It’s sort of the Holy Grail of the environmental issue. You [unintelligible] Anwar and, say, Artic Wildlife Range in Alaska, it’s 74 miles away from the existing pipeline. The estimates now, there are 39 billion barrels of oil. And, oh, you can’t open it ’cause you’re gonna disturb this, and you’re gonna do that, and everything else.

Well, I made a suggestion. Let’s open Anwar, take the revenues that we would be generating from that, which goes into the General Treasury now, and put it into the alternative fuels. Use a supposedly nonrenewable resource for a supposedly renewable resource. And they won’t eve buy that. They’ll still buy that 500 billion dollars’ worth of oil from overseas. It reminds me, right now, this policy, is having them cut their wrist and asking me for a transfusion on this arm. It’s a no-win situation.

And it frustrates me until they acknowledge that, except all forms of energy, then we’re going on a downslide. We’re not gonna accomplish what I think is important, and that is to maintain the economic strength of this nation. We’re losing it very rapidly.

I’ve heard their rap on the Anwar thing. They’re feeling like it’s taking the long view of what kind of energy it takes this country to run. They’re talking about the peak oil.

Okay, that could occur, but they’re doing anything right now that they can offset that. You use the oil we have today for what we’re using it for, they’re taking it to develop those areas of energy, which they’re talking about. But they don’t agree with that. They say, “Oh, we don’t need to have any more fossil fuels.” And by the way, we have a huge reserve of fossil fuels in the country of the United States of America. Offshore, California, huge amounts. Offshore Florida, offshore Alaska, and the [unintelligible] Sea, which Shell just bid two and a half billion dollars for. They think there’s more oil in that sea than there is in the Gulf of Mexico.

They keep saying, “We don’t have the reserves.” We do. We just have not looked for them because it was easier to buy it when it’s $2, $4 a barrel from overseas. Now, we’re caught, and we have to start doing that, or we can’t move our ship, we can’t move our planes, our trains, and our automobiles. It won’t happen. Now, some people like that. They like the idea of using rickshaws, and having people pedal everybody around in bicycles to get to and fro from work.

Well, you try that with a Peterbilt. You’d have to have a lot of little pygmies moving that truck with the pedaling down the road, because you can’t do it. You can’t move the product you have to do, and that’s what fossil fuels are used for.

You talked about exploration for oil. Does that require subsidies?

No. See, there’s this myth about subsidy at one time, we had a subsidy for the old companies. We did do that. That’s been many years ago. A depreciation allowance was what they call it. It was a tax giving. And that’s been repealed. Offshore, we have still some incentive for deep oil exploration, and that’s in the Gulf of Mexico primarily. But there’s none onshore and [unintelligible] won’t be anything. Chuck Sea won’t be, and off the coast of California, there won’t be any because that’s relatively shallow drilling.

It’s where you’re drilling, by the way. They’re drilling two miles down of the bed, and then another 15,000 fete into the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and I don’t imagine them doing that. How they can get the drill bit down and remember, two miles deep. They’re doing that in the Gulf of Mexico now. That’s extremely expensive oil, but we have to do some of that, or we won’t have any domestic oil at all. But keep in mind, we have another problem in this energy business: We’re not building any new refineries. We are now importing most of our fossil fuels as refined fuel.

We have not produced a new refinery since 1973. And so, what’s happening, and they’re getting the better part of the barrel. And eventually, and I’m gonna refer to this barrel. They’re getting the 24 percent that’s not put into propulsion or asphalt. They’re getting that 24 percent; it’s high-value. High-value products that’s made from the 24 percent of the barrel. They’re getting it, those countries that are exporting to us, and we’re buying the distillence that make us move, but we’re not getting the best benefit from the barrel.

Where is the money gonna come from to develop the next technology?

For some reason, people think money has to come from the government. If it is profitable and can be made available, it’ll be cheap enough for the consumer. That’s what people don’t understand. I understand. I don’t think you have to subsidize all these programs. If we were to do so, then let’s use that which is not renewable. Let’s use the fossil fuels now to do those things that-instead of putting it in the General Treasury, which they do now, to spend on social programs, which don’t produce a whole lot.

And so, I’m saying, if the demand is there and the technology will come if the demand is there, and they can do it, make it economical, if in fact they can be competitive against oil. Right now, oil even at $140 a barrel is the cheapest form of energy that can be transported versus solar power, which you need power and wind power. You need power lines and grids, which we don’t have. And it’s extremely expensive. And by the way, wind power, all the propellers and most of the housing of wind power comes from fossil fuels.

Without fossil fuels, you can’t build them. The solar panels come from fossil fuels. And so, it-it-it goes back to my wheel of energy. Let’s have all the spokes so we have a spooled wheel as it turns, instead of three spokes that make it blump, blump, blump, which won’t solve the problem.

There are a lot of stakeholders in policymaking, and is your sense that everyone is equally represented and they’re on a level playing field?

I think they’re fairly represented. Right now, coal gets a bad blow. Coal’s no good, coal’s dirty, can’t use coal. It’s the largest source of fossils fuels we have in the United States of America, more so than oil and natural gas. We can’t ignore coal, and if you talk about research, there ought to be more research we’re working on, it’s not new technology, it can be developed better, where we turn coal into liquids, which is should happen. We’re trying to do that in some areas of Alaska.

With all the oil and gas we have, we have more coal in Alaska. Sound like a Texan now. More coal in Alaska than the rest of the United States put together. And how do we utilize that coal? You don’t do it under the Speaker’s program or he, President’s program. Or the EPA, because they don’t think fossil fuels should be used “because we’re destroying the planet.” That is nonsense. Number one, the coal is created in a very warm period of time, not when there was ice. There was no coal or oils developed during the ice period of time.

So, it came in the past and possibly could come in the future. So, I’m saying that we have to look at all aspects of-of energy. Again, I go back to the wheel of energy. If we don’t do that, we’re missing the boat. We need the fossil fuels as well as the other sources of energy. Policy. Right now, everybody has an opportunity to be heard. I call them the Greenies which no one-anti-development. They oppose hydropower, by the way. They oppose wind power. They’re not really sold on solar power. Definitely against all oil power. And so, I keep saying, “Where are you gonna get the energy to run this nation?”

And they’ll say, “Well, we’ll conserve.” Now, conservation’s one of my pet peeves. I’m a Scotsman, I say this with pride, and I like to conserve. I’ll say that right up front. But the idea that you can conserve yourself into prosperity is ridiculous, because our population’s increasing. We have you’re here, and you and I could conserve what we’re gonna eat today and we could live tomorrow. But there’s five other people in this room, and they aren’t able to eat what you and I are gonna eat.

So, you can’t conserve yourself into prosperity. They think the more we conserve, the more we’ll have. Well, there’s some truth in that, but if you just try to conserve without production, you will eventually not have anything. And so, this is one of my big fights, trying to convince people with this energy policy from the administration. And by the way, this administration isn’t the only one that failed. I’ve been here now under eight presidents, and no one’s really addressed the issue of energy. The Congress has been very neglectful. The last major energy bill that become positive was the trans-Alaskan pipeline in 1973, that’s produced 17 billion barrels of oil to the United States of America, not overseas.

And that was done because we had an embargo. And I take credit for that, and not the embargo but passing the pipeline bill. But not any time during this 37 years I’ve been in office have we produced one ounce of energy. We stopped building hydro sites. We really have not build any type of fossil fuel industry in the United States. We’re living off the past. We really have not developed the coal as we should have. And we have these 1 percent of wind of solar. And you can’t put much more in, ’cause wind takes. And by the way, windmills will disturb nature.

There’s no doubt about that. I even got a little bit, sort of, what do you call it, thinking about the future. If you put enough windmills in, would you, in fact, deter the Earth from turning because wind is turned and created by changes in atmosphere by the turning of the Earth. So, we put enough windmills up, what will happen in the long run? No one’s studied that yet. Well, there might be somebody studying it and looking at this program. Now, I’m not being funny here. I’m just telling you, people don’t understand, there is a cost that you have to pay when you put windmills in, including migration of birds and et cetera,

Solar power, you’re gonna have to cover the whole state of Arizona to make enough power to run California. So, yes, it’s good for heating a house for a little bit, you bet. But it’s not gonna drive that car that you have to go to work with. It might make enough energy so you can run your computer, so in fact, then you might have to drive to work. That may be done in the future. I don’t know. But it’s all that big wheel of energy.

So, your sense is that all the stakeholders are pretty much at the table. The watchdog groups are talking about a big spike in lobbying expenditures in this Waxman Markey bill as well as a surge in campaign contributions from the energy sector to members of Congress on committees that weigh in on energy policy. What’s your take on that?

No. I’m listening to the health program right now, and they talk about all the money the insurance companies have put into this program. I’m voting no, and I never got a nickel out of the insurance companies. I do this on policy, when we can produce the most power for the equal amount of dollars to make this country strong again. Now, this idea of energy, and it always tickles me, about these watchdog groups. Where did they get their money? You talk about holier than thou. I’d like to have a little accounting of where they get their money. And they’re very careful about not disclosing that.

So, I get a little big offended when they say it’s money. This has nothing to do with money. This is what drives this country. We became great because of energy, we can remain great if we have energy, and we can go into a decline if we don’t have energy. So, it has nothing to do with it. So, I’m a little frustrated when they bring that up, and these watchdog groups are a bunch of [unintelligible] insiders have the greatest ability that they can generate hostility without solving a problem so they can send their kids to school.

They’re really parasites on a democracy.

We talked to someone representing the wind industry in Portland, Oregon, and he said their entire budget for lobbying in 2009, for the entire industry, was 3.7 million bucks. We talked to Scott Segal over at brace well Giuliani, and just one of their clients in 2009 spent $6.1 million. Here’s the wind industry, the entire industry, had spent 3.7. So, what we’re hearing is they don’t feel they have the influence or the money.

Well, this is media hype. This is media hype. This idea that money’s gonna buy influence is nonsense. I’m one of these people, you could check my records. I don’t get a whole lot of money from any one special group, other than the maritime industry. And I will say, because I am the only licensed captain in the whole Congress. Now, you think the maritime industry’s gonna give money to someone who doesn’t know anything about it? I know something about it, so they’re gonna contribute to me.

But it’s a cross-section, and this idea of the lobbies are all bad, I think, is a bad nomer. You want the-a bureaucrat to make these decisions? You want the executive branch to make these decisions? You want the EPA to make these decisions? That’s the thing I don’t understand. If you have an interest-the right of the public to take and half an egress, we call it, an egress to the legislative process is in the Constitution. And-and people don’t quite buy that idea.

I call it a boogeyman. It’s been made up by the watchdog, cast everybody in a bad light, when in reality, they’re just as equally as bad, if it’s bad. I think everybody should have the chance to have their opinions heard. I want energy. Now, the wind company’s having a bad time; that means they’re not doing their job. If they can put up windmills and provide energy for homes and make it at a reasonable rate, then they oughta be able to do that.

The government can’t do it for everyone. People did, Sir Francis Drake, did the discovery in Pennsylvania. Was the government subsidized? No. It became better than whale oil. Remember, that’s why we’re using petroleum products now, because we didn’t have enough whale oil to light the lamps. Now, if people don’t know, a little bit of history. Check that out. So, we had another product. We created kerosene so we could put it in our street lamps to be lit by the lamplighter, and that’s where oil became.

And then someone came along to develop the combustible engine, and they had to have a fuel they combust under compression and a spark. And they found out the best fuel available was a der-a derivative from oil. And that’s where we got gasoline. Gasoline wasn’t the first. It was kerosene. And then it went from kerosene, which is-has a lower flash rate than gasoline, and finally got gasoline, and they started adding additives to it, and that’s where you got jet fuel.

So, I don’t know people don’t understand that this-this issue will solve this problem. In fact, we’ll compound it if we keep getting involved in it with-at the government level. And I’m not-frankly, I think the oil companies have been given the short shrift. I’m not happy with international oil companies right now. But I will tell you that, because they’re involved overseas, and we import the oil from them. But we used to have a huge domestic oil production capability within this country. It wasn’t done by the ExxonMobils and the rest. It was done by independents, and we sorta lost that, and that’s something we can talk about later.

One thing we haven’t talked about is the perceived urgency attached with shifting our energy path, and the urgency, of course, is the global warming deal. What’s your sense on that? Is it bad science? Is global warming an issue?

That is a fear attempt to control people. And I wanna stress that. This is an attempt, the world is coming to an end, the sky is falling. In fact, the waters are rising, there’s gonna be great droughts. The people are gonna be starving to death, and it’s ironic to me, the same scientists-and I don’t agree with this, by the way. My University of Alaska dis-disagrees also. But we think we’re getting one degree colder, and that from 1916 until now, we think we’ve gotten one and a half degree colder.

But what bothers me is this whole idea the world’s coming to an end, New York’s gonna be flooded, and we have to change the way we live, and we’re gonna have to go to all-all these exotic fuels because we can’t have any more CO2 escaping from gases. It’s creating over the Americas on the globe. And it’s the thing that bothers me about this is the hysteria that occurs, and if you go back to 1973, the beginning of 1973, Time magazine, 1973, ’75, and ’77, had a whole series of ads or what do you want to call it, displays in the front page, saying, first one is “The Big Freeze.”

“The Coming Catastrophe.” How people were going to starve because we can’t grow any more crops. And then, we had the 1975 one, I believe, is where the c-the people are huddled around fire, because we’re faced with these disasters. Created by man, by the way. And ironically, in all these articles, written in 1975, 70-’83, ’75, and ’77, they, in fact, said that politicians have a solution and they ought to utilize it.

They ought to go forth and spray coal dust on the Arctic to warm up the planet so that, in fact, people could continue to grow crops and feed the masses. Now, that’s 1973, ’75, and ’77. Now, here we are in 209, 2008, 2007, and coming 2010, about how the world’s coming to an end with climate change because it’s man’s fault. And what they’re trying to do, I believe, is take the structure of the American people and the-the inability or the opportunity to improve their lot because they wanna stop fossil fuels totally.

And you cannot have a country that does not utilize fossil fuels. Now, I’ve said before, you can turn around and you might be able to generate some electricity through a solar power, wind power, geothermal power, but you can’t move a ship, a train, or an airplane. You can’t drive an automobile. They want that not to happen. Then you economy goes to hell in basket. And so, I’m arguing that this is all an attempt by certain world leaders and certain domestic leaders to change the way the American people live.

And as long as I’m sitting in this chair, I’m gonna convey the message, you have to have all of it, including fossil fuels. I want the opportunity for the young people of this nation to live as good or better than I have, to have an opportunity to leave the world. You can’t do it when you don’t have energy. They’re trying to take and destroy this country.

Most of these talks eventually get around to campaign finance, and there’s a movement to mandate public funding of federal elections. I think it’s called the Fair Elections Now, Act. Dick Durbin’s one of the sponsors.

How’s his check account? How much money does he have in his campaign account and where did he get it? Did you ask him that question?

You should. Get his FEC report. Here’s a guy saying one thing and doing another thing. Now, if you want a Congress of millionaires, no limitation if you want a Congress that has no interest, then you will have public financing. You will have a ne’er-do-well, a college graduate maybe, if you’re lucky, and you will have somebody that knows nothing.

As long as it’s publicly exposed and everybody knows exactly where they’re getting their money, and you can do that online instantaneously, I would support that in a heartbeat. But this is-this problem is so I think a disservice to the American public. I don’t like public financing. I never have. It didn’t work in the presidential elections. I thought we would have learned from that. We have a check-off for the presidential elections.

Now, if I remember correctly, Mr. Obama said he was not gonna take a financial support. He ended up being one of the greatest collectors of dollars, and that made McCain and the rest of them have to run on, very frankly, the same playing field. Now, if you were to level that playing field the way you want to, I don’t think it would be good for democracy, and this is what this is all about. You have to have the ability for individuals to participate in their government, as long as it’s public information.

And I think that important. Then you have the right to make the decision, do you want to support that individual that got so-X amount of dollars from the yo-yo company. There is a yo-yo lobbyist around here, and that really fits the Congress right-quite well, by the way, the yo-yo company. But you have a right to make-and if you don’t wanna contribute, that’s fine. To have you say voluntarily, “Uh-uh, that ain’t the way it’s gonna work,” you watch. If this thing starts moving, they’ll make you be required to put so much money into congressional races.

It’s a tax, and I’m saying this is the wrong way to go. I’ve been this was all my life. I’ve run races that cost very little and run races that cost a lot of money, but I’ve exposed every nickel I’ve ever got from anybody in the campaign process, and that’s what democracy’s all about.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you?

Eight presidents, 1658 congressman I’ve served under. About 11,740 congressman elected since we’ve been a nation. And this energy issue has not been addressed as it should have been, and that is the development of energy. We have not done that, and shame on us. We are still buying from abroad. Most everything you have on you right now is bought from abroad. It’s not produced in the United States.

You buy it. We’ve become a consuming nation, not a producing nation, and not society can prevail if you become a consumption nation instead of a producing nation. And that’s what’s occurred in the United States. Energy is the big one, and that’s what we have to do. There is no energy policy from this president other than not to have any fossil fuels. The Speaker is-is equally as bad as well as Markey and Waxman. They’ve got this crazy idea that they, as human beings, are the ones that can solve the problem that maybe we didn’t create.

And by solving it create worse problems, because it will ruin the economy of this country. We will not have the opportunity. We’ll go into a demise. And by the way, it’s not new. The same magazine, I don’t know, it was Newsweek hit last week, has the-the-the collapse of empires in the past and what happened. Deep debt, lack of production, lack of consumption, and the inability to be, very frankly the ability to believe in themselves. And that could happen to us.

We’re not, safe. And I just hope the American public, which is basically a good bunch of people that have not really been challenged in 64 years, have gotten the concept that government can solve their problems for them. And in fact, the government impedes the ability to solve problems. This president right now talks about “We’re gonna get jobs on the street by stimulus packages.” You can do it because you got all the regulations, all the stipulations, all the ages involved. You can’t put them on the street.

This energy issue cannot be solved until the-he declares it as an energy emergency. Remember, we did this with the pipeline. We built a pipeline in three years, 800 miles long, 2 million barrels a day. Two refineries, 16 ships. We did that in three years’ time, because we had an emergency and we declared it as an emergency in the Congress.

And until we do that, all these things, we’re doing is for naught. You won’t solve this problem of energy being available to the American people at a reasonable cost, and for the good of the people and the future economy.

How is fundraising for you? We haven’t heard anyone say that they enjoy it. What’s your experience with fundraising?

Well, there’s two things. One things: The same people bitching about raising money, you find out some of them don’t make much policy. I run every two years. I don’t ever stop running. I try to raise money. It’s hard to raise money. I don’t enjoy it. I’ll be the first one to tell you that. But if you don’t do that and you rely on the federal government to pay for it or the taxpayer to pay for it, what is your incentive to do anything? Or listen to anybody?

Policy is made by those that understand who you represent. I get all kinds of people in this office. I get more visitors in this office, I believe, than any other congressman, ’cause I’m the only congressman from Alaska. And my policy is set on what they want me to do. And this is-this is the facts of life. And-and those people who support public financing, either they’re very lazy or they aren’t policymakers. That sounds good on the book. Looks good on television. But you look at them, and they’re really not very, very good legislators.

Because they don’t understand who they legislate for. That’s why they call this a House of Representatives. I represent the people. I represent those that come see me. There may be a lobbyist with them; there may not be. Doesn’t make any difference. And by the way, you know who hires the most lobbyists? It’s not oil companies. It’s not [unintelligible]. It’s the cities, the boroughs, the counties, the hospitals, because they feel as if the bureaucracy is not listening to them.

That’s why they’re there for. Our government has become top-heavy. Not the government of the people. And that’s the fault of the media, because in the media, even in the Copenhagen discussion, the president’s gonna take and get millions and billions of dollars for the impoverished country to solve their climate changing. He does not have the authority to do that. Under the Constitution, only the Congress can appropriate dollars and spend dollars, not the president. He is the true CEO of the company, but he cannot.

It is the board of directors, which we are. And what’s happening, you, the media, has put him in the position of being king. The president’s gonna do this, the president’s gonna do that, and we have allowed him to do it. It’s just not this president. Dick Cheney, bless his heart. He wanted a stronger executive branch. That’s the worst form of democracy we can get. And Obama’s going right along with it. They want us-the EPA’s putting out air quality control regulations, circumventing the Congress. That’s not democracy.

It should be done through the Congress. And I get very frustrated, because we did not form this nation to have a king. We had a revolution to stop the king, to have a democracy, and we oughta continue that. And that’s the thing I’ve been arguing, along with an energy package, all along. The president can do it he wants to do it, but if you guys want a dictator, have-I can’t be-what’s her name? Barbra Streisand? I can’t move out of the United States, but I don’t wanna live under a dictator.

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