“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it.” – President Barack Obama’s inaugural address
The seemingly renewed dedication to sustainable energy, that the President expressed in his inaugural address, inspired many environmentalists. A little over a month ago, somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 converged on Washington to voice their opposition to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. San Diego has its own event in Mission Bay Park, where Mayor Filner and others addressed a crowd of +500. President Obama, meanwhile, played golf. If President Obama was for sustainable energy, that must mean he is against fossil fuels right? – Only he has never said that.
To the contrary, a year ago he boasted “under my administration we have a near record number of oil rigs operating right now – more oil and gas rigs than the rest of the world combined.” In the video above, President Obama once again boasts of America’s increased oil and gas production. And, the day before that, he said, “We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”
This is not a betrayal. Though President Obama has attempted to cut down the subsidies being given to fossil fuels, that is a very different from opposing the technologies.
His choices to head the three agencies with the most relevance to climate change have all endorsed fossil fuels. Ernest Moniz, who will head the Department of Energy, is a proponent of fracking who also supports clean coal. The next Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, is a former petroleum engineer who has fracked an oil well. Gina McCarthy, who will head the Environmental Protection Agency, “crafted the EPA’s first air pollution rules for fracking and oversaw the development of as-yet-unfinalized standards that would essentially end new construction of coal-fired facilities without carbon capture or other techniques.”
While environmentalists were converging on Washington, some leaders of the renewable and fossil fuel industry sectors appear to have been coming together.
On February 3, Zach Strahan, of Clean Technica was on a conference along with Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the American Gas Association, and Rhone Resch, President and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The thing that impressed him was “Mr Resch and others on the panel spoke in a surprisingly friendly way about natural gas (which is certainly not the cleanest energy option), even in their presentations on renewable energy matters. Throughout the conference call, Mr Resch and others seemed to steer clear of the term ‘clean energy,’ but the implications were that natural gas was on the clean side of the table.”
The list of attendees at a White House meeting earlier this month is revealing. Along with CEOs from the renewable energy sector, like Cynthia Warner of Sapphire Energy, there were representatives from fossil fuel sector.
That was around the time that just we learned that the US department of Energy’s Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was written by a consultant under contract with TransCanada, the company that is pushing to build the Keystone XL Pipeline.
A week later President Obama resumed his “all of the above” theme. I suspect he is not going to veto the keystone Pipeline. Nor will he end America’s dependence on fossil fuels. It will most likely grow stronger, until the supply runs out or renewable energy becomes more viable. Many perceive Natural Gas as a transitional technology that will bridge the gap until renewable energies can take a stronger role. It now seems apparent that Obama has long been among them.The $2 billion dollar clean transportation fund he is setting up, at the fossil fuel industry’s, expense, is a bridge to a more sustainable future
