Why We Need Obama: Energy

Showing posts with label Energy. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

T. Boone Pickens Being Stonewalled By Republicans

T. Boone Pickens -- a conservative billionaire oil tycoon who is putting billions of dollars into a plan to develop wind farms and convert our car fleet to natural gas -- recently gave an interview and said that Republicans in Congress are stonewalling him because the only thing they're interested in is more oil drilling. What a f*cking surprise!

Q: You told the New York Times last month that you’d never vote for a Democrat. Are you finding that difficult in reaching out to Democrats then with your plan? […]
PICKENS: So I am having no problem working with the Democrats. Having a little problem working with the Republicans. They don’t like it because I want to do more than just drill. And they, somehow have gotten it, a lot of them have, that you can drill your way out of this. But you can’t do it. There’s not enough oil there to do it.

As Think Progress puts it:

Pickens made it clear that, despite five straight weeks of calls for an “all of the above” energy strategy, congressional conservatives are interested in little besides drilling. In fact, last week, when the House passed an energy bill that included conservatives’ demand for offshore drilling, House Republicans opposed it because it would have repealed Big Oil tax breaks to invest in renewable energy. Apparently to Republican ears, “all of the above” sounds just like “Drill Baby drill.”

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Tom Friedman on the New Industrial Revolution

Tom Friedman was also on Meet the Press this morning and laid out what I think is the most compelling case thus far on on the new industrial revolution that is coming in the area of developing new energy technologies. His basic thesis from his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, is that the next wave of global prosperity and innovation will come out of the development of new technologies to address the climate crisis. On Meet the Press, he laid out the case that America can either lead in this new economy or become a second-rate power, behind whichever country most fully embraces a leadership role in developing new energy technology.

He also had a very skeptical view of the Republicans' singular focus on "Drill, baby, Drill!", which is perfectly in line with Obama's and my view:

I’m actually not against drilling. What I’m against is making that the center of our focus because we are on the eve of a new revolution, the energy technology revolution. It would be, Tom, as if on the eve of the IT revolution, the revolution of PCs and the internet, someone was up there standing and demanding, “IBM Selectric typewriters, IBM Selectric typewriters.” That’s what “drill, drill, drill” is the equivalent of today.

Watch the video here:

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer's Speech - Video

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer gave a great, little noticed speech tonight that touched on some great energy issues.

Best line:

If we drilled everywhere… if we drilled in all of John McCain’s backyards- even the ones he doesn’t know he has.

Here is the video:

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Obama's Olympic Ad: 'Hands'

Here is the video of the ad the Obama campaign is playing fduring the Olympics. It's refreshing to see how positive his campaign has remained, even in the face of the lying, hackneyed dreck that McCain keeps putting out:

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Obama's New Energy Ad

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

More 'Psychological Benefits' from McCain on Energy

On the heels of McCain's admission yesterday that his support of President Bush's proposal to open up the US coastline to offshore drilling would have ZERO short term effect on gas prices and would only give Americans a "psychological benefit" (read: voters think it sounds nice), here's another doozy.

Today, McCain pledged that America would have "strategic independence" from foreign oil by 2025.

Doesn't that sound nice? Do you have any idea what that means? Neither do I.

It sounds an awful lot like McCain a couple months ago:

My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

If "strategic independence by 2025" is the same as "eliminat[ing] our dependence on foreign oil", here's the big problem with that (via the Carpetbagger Report):

[T]here isn’t an energy expert in the world — not one — who thinks we can “eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” It’s a child’s fantasy, but McCain spouts this stuff as if solving our problems really were just that easy. It reminds me of his solution to the fighting in Iraq: “One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’”

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