AVOID A MONUMENTAL DISASTER

AVOID A MONUMENTAL DISASTER
Los Angeles Times: The controversial plan to build a sprawling World War II memorial on the Washington Mall is headed for needed reconsideration. The National Capital Planning Commission has voted unanimously to review the $100-million-plus project, whose inappropriate design and location have been widely faulted.
In a step that should have been sought much earlier, the commission has asked the National Park Service to build a scale-model mock-up on-site, a basic step to heading off a potential architectural disaster. And it has invited a group of leading architects and urban designers to give their views on the project at a public hearing next month. Six years after President Clinton approved the site for the monument, it will finally get the realistic scrutiny it requires.
Criticism of the memorial has nothing to do with what it is intended to honor. A national monument recognizing the achievements of the 16 million Americans who served in uniform during World War II is long overdue. Along with the nation's allies, they truly were the saviors of civilization.
Grim aesthetics: The controversy over the plan stems from its proposed location, spread over more than seven acres of the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and its grim aesthetics. Consisting of a large pool, fountains, 56 17-foot-tall commemorative pillars, a pair of triumphal arches and an abundance of bronze eagles, wreaths and bas reliefs, the memorial seems more imperial than hero ic, recalling more the self-exalting monuments of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy than the democracy that mobilized to defeat its totalitarian enemies.
Supporters of the project are concerned that further delay in starting work would deny many aging veterans of World War II the chance to see the remembrance of their service and their accomplishments completed. Yet a monument that in its scale, pretentiousness and intrusion on the Mall's great sweep of open space proved more an embarrassment than a dignified tribute would only detract from the honor it is meant to convey.
When the American Battle Monuments Commission first proposed the memorial, it intended it to be built in a wooded area adjacent to the Mall called Constitution Gardens. Opponents of the current plan continue to urge use of that site, along with a design more appropriate to the cause and the people it commemorates.
By moving to reconsider its previous decisions, the National Capital Planning Commission has taken an important step in the right direction.
BOOST ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Providence Journal: The Bush administration greatly over-emphasizes stepped-up fossil-fuel extraction and under-emphasizes efficiency and conservation in its national energy approach.
Both Vice President Cheney, who is spearheading the program, and President Bush have extensive backgrounds in the oil business, which may prejudice them. To be fair, Mr. Cheney is quite right to note that the nation depends overwhelmingly on oil, natural gas and coal for its energy needs. That can be changed only gradually if we are to avoid major economic disruption. Let's not be fatuous about all this.
Still, Mr. Cheney too flippantly dismisses conservation as a sign of "personal virtue" but "not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."
Americans can survive being more careful about their often mindless energy use. And big new efficiencies remain to be made, from lighting to air-conditioning, heating, household appliances to, most dramatically, motor vehicles, whose average fuel efficiency has fallen in recent years.
Light trucks: As was proved when big gains were made under the stress of 1970s oil shocks, such new efficiencies strengthen the economy and national security. After all, raising efficiency limits our dependence on imported oil. As the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has noted, improving the efficiency of cars and light trucks would be a far more effective way to reduce reliance on foreign oil than, say, would the quick fix of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Further, since U.S. consumers and businesses are the world's biggest, and astonishingly wasteful, consumers of fossil fuels, they are the biggest contributors to climate change. We need to be better world citizens.
The administration should support higher gasoline-mileage standards as well as tax breaks for more-fuel-efficient vehicles and utilities that use renewable energy sources such as solar and promising new technologies such as fuel cells. (Other Western nations are speeding ahead of us on the latter.)
The administration does have an inkling of the importance of efficiency: Note that President Bush endorsed last-minute Clinton administration rules mandating more efficiency in dryers and water heaters. But it has yet to recognize the importance of a wide and deep conservation plan to strengthen the economy and national security for the long term, and to better protect the world environment that we all share.