Naomi Oreskes’ upcoming book, Merchants of Doubt, explains “the troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda.”
The prolific UC San Diego professor discusses the history of both our understanding of human-caused global warming and the anti-science disinformation campaign in this terrific talk from last week.
Friends of the Earth recently released two TV ads in South Carolina and Georgia opposing the Obama administration’s proposed bailout of the nuclear industry.
The most controversial aspects of the energy debate that we’ve been having: The House passed an energy bill, and people complained about, well, there’s this cap and trade thing, and you just mentioned, you know, let’s do the fun stuff before we do the hard stuff.
The only thing I would say about it is this. We may be able to separate these things out, and it-it’s conceivable that that’s where the Senate ends up, but the concept of incentivizing clean energy so that it’s the cheaper more effective kind of energy is one that is proven to work and is actually a market-based approach.
Brian Beutler quite rightly notes that Obama’s tacit acceptance of this outcome makes it all the more likely. For someone who ostensibly supports a clean energy and climate bill that follows the science, this president sure does seem to take a lot of steps to make such a bill less likely to pass the congress.
Here is a video clip of the exchange:
Update — Looking over the full transcript, it looks like Brian jumped the gun a bit. In context, it isn’t clear at all that Obama is signaling to the Senate that splitting energy from cap and trade would be acceptable. In fact, right after the clip above, he makes a decent argument for putting a price on carbon.
During the CitizenTube State of the Union Q & A discussion, President Obama severely dodged a question submitted by young activists about his support of dirty energy.His answer is unwise, and deceitful. I hate to say this about the President that has done more to invest in a clean energy economy than anyone before him (not a hard accomplishment since W, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter were the only presidents in office since clean energy became an issue), but young people are tired of being lied to by the White House and congress.
He continues:
Despite the evidence and public support, President Obama’s comments disregarded the potential of renewable energy. Instead, he championed dangerous and dirty alternatives like Carbon Capture and Sequestration (for some incomprehensible President Obama keeps on calling it ‘clean coal’) and nuclear energy even though many studies question their ability to quickly and cheaply reduce our emissions. CCS is extremely inefficient, forcing us to dig up and burn much more coal per unit of energy produced (that certainly won’t help our friends in West Virginia fighting to protect their mountains). Nuclear energy consumes large amounts of fresh water, already a precious resource that will become even more rare as the climate warms up.Is President Obama’s support for these dirty forms of energy just a gimmick to schmooze voters?
It is becoming increasingly clear, to me at least, that President Obama truly embraces the Republican mantra of ‘all of the above’ as an energy policy. One problem: ‘all of the above’ is a catchphrase, not a plan for sustainably powering our economy for decades into the future. Acknowledging that there is legitimate role for coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas in our energy mix is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Even with the right policies and investments it will take decades to alter our energy mix to a somewhat-sustainable balance. But when President Obama uses his rhetorical gifts to sing the praises of dirty energy — and encourages increased oil/gas drilling and loan guarantees for constructing new nuclear power plants — he is moving our energy mix in the wrong direction and making the difficult transition to a low-carbon economy more lengthy and expensive.
You can watch the question and answer session here at the 31:38 mark:
MoveOn.org is launching a series of hard-hitting ads this week targeting the three Senate Democrats–Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.)–who’ve co-sponsored Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) resolution blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
The television ads, which will amount to a six-figure buy and run in Arkansas, Louisiana and Nebraska, feature unsettling images of Americans smoking to highlight their exposure to air pollution. The shots include not only a Little League team puffing away, but a woman giving birth and a woman holding her baby–in which BOTH the mother and baby are holding cigarettes.
