Eugene Robinson - Obama Drills A Hole In What There Is Of His Climate Policy

[hatrack]

Here are two facts that cannot be reconciled: The planet has experienced the warmest January-through-April on record, and the Obama administration has authorized massive new oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean. “Climate change can no longer be denied .?.?. and action can no longer be delayed,” President Obama said in an Earth Day address in the Everglades. Indeed, Obama has been increasingly forceful in raising the alarm about heat-trapping carbon emissions. “If we don’t act,” he said in Florida, “there may not be an Everglades as we know it.”

Why, then, would the Obama administration give Royal Dutch Shell permission to move ahead with plans for Arctic offshore drilling? Put simply, if the problem is that we’re burning too much oil, why give the green light to a process that could produce another million barrels of the stuff per day, just ready to be set alight?

Please hold the pedantic lectures about how the global oil market works: Demand will be met, if not by oil pumped from beneath the Arctic Ocean, then by oil pumped from somewhere else. By this logic, the administration’s decision is about energy policy — promoting U.S. self-sufficiency and creating jobs — rather than climate policy. The way to reduce carbon emissions, according to this view, is by cutting demand, not by restricting supply.

EDIT

“Drill, baby, drill” was a slogan Republicans used during the 2008 campaign, but it became a reality under Obama. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, domestic oil production zoomed from 5.4 million barrels a day in 2009 to 8.7 million barrels a day last year, a level not seen since the waning days of the Reagan administration. Obama has opened vast new lands and offshore tracts to oil drilling. To be fair, he has also put some sensitive areas off-limits, including in the Arctic. But overall, under Obama, the United States has come to threaten the likes of Saudi Arabia and Russia for supremacy in fossil-fuel production.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-perilous-all-of-the-above-energy-strategy/2015/05/18/4e6c8a64-fd90-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

it's not enough to talk the talk....

[Triana]

2. Keystone XL, TPP

Obama says A, does B.

[FlatBaroque]

3. Eugene, while you are down there

under the bus, would you please check the muffler. There's a rattle noise under there. Seymour, move over, make room for Eugene.