Earth Equity News

A Defense of Obama's Dirty-Energy Rhetoric. By David Roberts, Grist, October 19, 2008. "Obama's effort to capture a few key red states means that he needs the votes of working class whites -- he won't get them bashing coal. Greens have nowhere else to go -- Obama's job in the campaign is to pull in swing voters, not blow kisses at loyal factions... Now, I won't try to talk enviros out of protesting Obama's frequent nods to dirty energy. That's their job. But it's important that they heed what he's actually saying. Listen closely and you can hear a fairly radical message, hidden right under the nation's nose, as it were... Some folks will call this politiciany double-talk and weasel words. Me, I think it's smart. Obama supports nuclear power in that he has no objections to it being a prominent part of the energy mix if it can solve its waste and proliferation problems. That conditional phrase is everything. Nuclear proponents think nuclear can solve those problems (or already has); nuclear opponents think it can't. But can either disagree with the conditional phrase itself? Would anyone oppose nuclear if it really did solve all those problems? Same with coal. Obama 'supports' coal -- liquid coal and coal-with-sequestration-- if it can meet high GHG emission standards. Liquid coal has to meet the standards of his low-carbon fuel standard. 'Clean coal' has to show that it can safely sequester its emissions (and Obama's willing to fund several demonstration projects to find out). Now, I -- who think coal is the enemy of the human race -- don't think liquid coal can meet a low-carbon fuel standard. I don't think coal plants ever will be able to cost-effectively sequester all their emissions. So Obama's position is just a restatement of mine, in more politically anodyne terms. The offshore drilling business is an even easier case. The offshore drilling provisions Obama's been willing to give ground on are unlikely to result in much actual drilling. Given that, if he can gain some political advantage by saying he 'supports offshore drilling,' what's the harm? The only place where this defense breaks down is on the subject of ethanol, where Obama's support seems to be genuine and to involve many billions of public subsidies, and McCain's position is substantively correct. On this Obama deserves all the lumps he takes."