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| state of the union's energy | ||||||
| (Thursday, 26 January 2012) Written by greeniac108389 | ||||||
| In case you were under a rock, President Obama delivered his state of the union earlier this week. It was striking, to me at least, the amount of time he spent on energy. Though I guess when our economy is fueled by energy consumption, it only makes sense. He phrased the discussion in an interesting way, and in one that for the most part I tend to agree with. He discarded notions of climate change, even admitting that there wasn't a chance in hell this congress would agree to "climate legislation." Yet, he talked of a clean energy economy, of producing American energy. And in the context of articles such as this: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/oil-supply-as-a-strategic-risk/, and Iran's threat to shut down the strait of hormuz, it only makes sense to be a bit worried about oil supplies. At first, this seems to be a great argument for the Keystone pipeline- which Obama rejected earlier this month, and in his speech strongly defended his administration's energy policies, remarking that American energy shouldn't endanger our people or our environment. And in his speech, Obama paid enough credit to traditional, olden methods of producing energy, and promised to speed up domestic source production. But then, he got to the crux of his argument in arguing for a clean energy economy. Noting that it was federal research dollars that created our natural gas industry, he argued for strong investments into federal research to catalyze the clean energy sector. This is exactly what is needed, and I can only hope that we can push it forward. We are simply in an energy transition period, moving from the olden stuff to newer, better stuff that can drive our economy forward without destroying the very land we depend upon. *Though I have to note that Obama did make an argument for fracking, though he somehow thinks it can be done without lots of the dangerous chemicals, we'll see about that. Just don't mention the earthquakes.
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