… Fully 87% favor including a provision in comprehensive energy legislation to require utilities to produce more energy from wind, solar or other renewable sources. More than three-quarters (78%) favor tougher efficiency standards for building and major appliances. By greater than two-to-one (66% to 29%), the public supports including limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in comprehensive energy legislation. Yet about as many (68%) favor expanded exploration and development of coal, oil and gas in the United States. [...] – Public Remains of Two Minds on Energy Policy
Pres. Obama will give a national address from the Oval Office, which should signal just how grave the BP blowout is to this country. From Marc Ambinder:
Tonight’s speech comes at an inflection point in the oil spill — and the President will outline the plan going forward. First, he’ll lay out how we will deal with the oil that has leaked and what must be done to both cleanup now and ultimately restore the Gulf. Second, he will outline the steps being taken to help and protect those suffering economically as a result of this disaster, particularly in the claims process. Third, he will outline the changes he believes are necessary to ensure that a disaster such as this never happens again. Last, he will talk about what our fundamental energy approach must be going forward to reduce our dependence on oil and fossil fuels. President Obama understands the challenges and has a clear plan to meet them.
If you want to know what’s wrong with the right on energy, see Michelle Malkin. It’s her kind of politics that should rally people behind the President.
Malkin’s warped view should also give you a good idea of what Barack Obama is up against tonight. She’s calling Rep. Henry Waxman the “witch hunter of Capitol Hill,” because big bad Henry is being too tough on the poor little oil companies.
Malkin obviously is unmoved by an ecosystem being destroyed, while small businesses that have been around for generations struggle to stay afloat.
Teddy Roosevelt she is not.
Being a champion and steward of American natural resources is unimportant to her and others like her on the right. Shorter Malkin: let the birds die.
Malkin’s people don’t want regulation, the softening of which is how we got into this predicament in the first place, aided by Interior Sect. Salazar’s incompetence. They vilify the politicians and the people who are trying to hold marauding companies like BP accountable for what they do, with the BP Blowout now known to have been caused by corporate malfeasance, skirting safety for cost custting, which has ended up in destroying the Gulf Coast.
However, with the peanut gallery right thinking government is being too tough on Big Oil, no matter what Pres. Obama says tonight it will be greeted with “job killer” reviews. That’s the card the right always plays when Democrats try to move this country away from fossil fuels.
Remember what the right did to Al Gore when he talked about moving beyond the combustion engine? Meanwhile, Democrats ignored him. Visionaries are never respected, but if we ever needed one we do now.
There is no evidence Pres. Obama is a visionary. But horrific challenges can bring the best out in brilliant men and women.
The problem with tonight’s Oval Office Address is what Pres. Obama can’t and won’t say. He will not say when or if BP can plug the hole. No one knows that answer, which should make the Malkin brigade public environmental enemy number one.
Englishman Samuel Johnson said “That nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.” BP is a great candidate for a public hanging. Perhaps the other multi-national oil companies would take note of the event? Cap and trade is a terrible idea. What we don’t need is Wall Street getting into the business of buying, bundling and selling global warming in the capitalist free market. A stiff carbon tax is the only approach that makes any sense. The more you use, the more you pay. Peace
We already have cap and trade for the other pollutants.
Why can’t it be extended to carbon?
I’d say that plenty of jobs are bing killed by this disaster. I pay no attention to Malkin,she has zero credibility in my eyes. She is like a public irritant.
The american people just have to grow up on this issue.We cannot go on having our cake and eating it too. Cheap gasoline has got to go the way of the dinosauers. I say this understanding the hardships that it will cause those least able to handle it. Poor people and working people who live long distances from work because it is cheaper to do so, small farmers and small business people who are barely making it now.Too bad an equiable rationing system could not be worked out but that is impossible considering how bought off our congress is at the current time.
If only this was talked about more. In all the media attention over whether President Obama was emoting properly, seldom was there any real discussion on our self-destructive addition to inexpensive fossil fuels.
Malkin’s thinking is rampant in this country. She thinks regulators and Henry Waxman are the enemy. She and her ilk haven’t learned jack from BP’s blowout. It’s a very dangerous reminder of where the other side could take us, which is into deeper, crude-saturated water.
Rep. Waxman was my rep for a lot of years. He knows his job and does it very well. It’s why he infuriates and sets off the right.
Mabye MM will visit Arizona and get pulled over for something. Unless she has her passport and Birth Certificate they can then throw her into an isolation holding tank pending deportation….she HAS her birth certificate you say? SO WHAT! She looks ferrin and THAT’S enough if they think your Mexican, so deport her and let’s see how much she supports the insanity the wingnuts are pushing. But either way, she’ll be gone.
This is just typical Michelle Malkin. I will be watching the presidents address to hear about the BP spill and about clean energy. But I am still upset at BP as well as this administration, the regulars. I am telling you, President Obama is going to have to hand Ken Zalazar because he is going to be a drag to his presidency.
Ken Zalazar has got to go period !!!
Obviously, I agree.