President Obama delivered what was billed as an energy speech on Thursday in Maryland, though his remarks took campaign overtones when Obama mocked his Republican challengers as members of the “Flat Earth Society.”
…”Lately, we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians, a lot of the folks who are, you know, running for a certain office. Who shall go unnamed,” Obama said. “They’ve been talking down new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power. They dismiss solar power. They make jokes about biofuels. They were against raising fuel standards. I guess they like gas guzzlers.”
More like this, please, President Obama. The media has been so focused on Republican crazytown for the last few months that when somebody actually points out the insane backwardness of their ideas, it’s a fun little head rush. It’s like spending months speaking in a foreign language and then finally running into someone who’s fluent in English.
Be more critical of Obama. He keeps promising the same pipe dream of the US becoming energy independent, just like the past eight presidents have promised this, but his “new” plan is pretty much the same as the existing policy. Wind and solar etc. are okay, but there’s nowhere near enough of it to replace coal in the foreseeable future, and the entire country is still entirely dependent on oil (wind and solar-generated electricity are not interchangeable with energy from liquids), i.e., oil within a certain price range, which means more dangerous and expensive offshore drilling. Clean energy and energy independence make him sound better than the republican candidates, but he’s not walking the walk. U.S. oil discovery and production already peaked decades ago, and ramping up domestic production to become independent is an impossible goal — the recoverable reserves of conventional oil just aren’t there. He’s just another mainstream politician who won’t face the truth about energy.
@1. This lovely little piece of flotsam is from the Stranger. They’re grade A assholes over there, spending most of crafting propaganda for the neo-libs.
I know you’ll dismiss this as lefty drivel, but there are actual FACTS from the Energy Information Administration that shed light on his and your comments:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/gasprices
Both wind and solar power has already achieved grid parity if you take away the massive subsidies for fossil-fuel-generated power.
You are right that today it is difficult to move someone’s fat ass in a single-occupant-vehicle sixty miles down the freeway using electricity. That too will come before too much longer. That won’t work immediately for moving freight, but train travel is more efficient anyway, and can use electricity.
Who will dismiss it as lefty drivel? Personally, I’m far to the left of Obama, not that much of energy policy can be reduced to simple right/left terms. “Actual FACTS”? Thanks, but I’ve been researching our energy outlook for over ten years, and there’s no way to cite all the sources I’d need to really convince anyone in a comment thread (a decent treatment of even a specific point will usually take dozens of pages and references) but there’s nothing in that link that really disputes what I was saying. Just because there’s an uptick in US oil production since 2008 doesn’t mean that we can become “energy independent.” Energy is overwhelmingly a global market, the US consumes far, far more than it produces, and Obama himself talks about the need to buy lots more oil from producers such as Brazil.
I’m not against wind or solar as being part of our energy mix, but not enough has been done with them, and the sheer size of the infrastructure still needing to be built puts them out of reach as near-term solutions. These problems are so big that Obama, Bush etc. would rather just talk about solutions and fiddle around with incremental changes, or actively standing in the way, repeating the decades-old rhetoric about “energy independence,” “clean coal,” a nuclear renaissance (Obama is big on this), improved fuel efficiency standards (not improved enough to deal with the problems we’re facing), etc.
There’s just too much to really discuss. I just think that Obama supporters are not critical enough of him on things like this. It’s easier to just go after the easier targets in the GOP, usually just on social issues.