Wednesday-Night

See also U.S. Presidential Campaign - Issues

John McCain on Stewards of Our Nation’s Rich Natural Heritage
Barack Obama on Energy & Environment

In Bush’s end-game, lots of changes on environment
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the U.S. presidential candidates sprint toward the finish line, the Bush administration is also sprinting to enact environmental policy changes before leaving power.
Whether it’s getting wolves off the Endangered Species List, allowing power plants to operate near national parks, loosening regulations for factory farm waste or making it easier for mountaintop coal-mining operations, these proposed changes have found little favor with environmental groups.
The one change most environmentalists want, a mandatory program to cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, is not among these so-called “midnight regulations.”
29 October
Palin’s Energy Speech
Gov. Sarah Palin abandoned the usual flash of her campaign rallies on Wednesday to deliver her second policy speech as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, an address focused on energy security.
he called for greater energy independence, blaming decades of presidents and legislators for failing to achieve it.
“It’s been 30 years’ worth of failed energy policies in Washington, 30 years where we’ve had opportunities to become less reliant on foreign sources, and 30 years of failure in that area,” Ms. Palin said. “We must steer far clear of the errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly 20 Congresses and seven presidents.”
Ms. Palin also laid the blame at the feet of her Democratic counterpart, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has opposed offshore drilling. Mr. Biden was overheard telling a supporter on the campaign trail that he did not support clean-coal technology in the United States.
“He says that clean coal is O.K. for China, but sorry, Ohio, Joe Biden says it’s not for you,” she said. “And that is just nonsense.”
If Senator John McCain is elected, she added, $2 billion a year would be devoted to clean-coal research and development.
13 October
(The New Yorker Comment) … On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.
There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide, and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade program as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea—lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling—and placed it at the very center of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term, and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be “insignificant.” Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”
5 October
Russian Gas Executives Visit Palin’s Turf
MOSCOW — A high-level delegation from the Russian energy company Gazprom met in Anchorage with state officials on Monday to talk about investing in Alaskan energy projects. The meeting came nearly three weeks after Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska talked in a television interview about her expertise in energy matters and took a hard line with Russia.
Does Climate Change’s Cause Matter? Not to Palin
(Planet Ark/Reuters) … she also linked increased domestic oil production to the fight against global warming.
“As we rely more and more on other countries that don’t care as much about the climate as we do, we’re allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for,” she said, when talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. OH!
2 October
Palin’s Pipeline to Nowhere?
(TIME) Palin is now rolling the dice on the national stage with a political persona based in part on her willingness to challenge the big oil companies. To many Americans, it’s an appealing pitch, and Palin’s record suggests that she has stuck to her guns more than most. But it’s also true that her zeal has produced mostly short-term political gains rather than lasting results–and she has been forced, in some cases, to do business with the same companies she originally sought to push to the sidelines. And that underlines a political reality as true in Washington as it is in Juneau: Fighting the system is a lot easier than actually beating it.
10 September
Obama Tells US Farmers He Backs Ethanol Mandate
Besides providing home-grown fuel, ethanol creates jobs in rural America, said Obama, who supported more rural economic development. The jobless rate in rural areas is well above the US average.
3 September
“Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems, as if we all didn’t know that already,” Ms. Palin said. “But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines, build more nuclear plants, create jobs with clean coal and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources.”
And Then There Was One
Thomas L. Friedman
With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.
Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.
August 19
McCain campaigns for off-shore drilling on Gulf rig
ABOARD THE CHEVRON GENESIS (Reuters) - Republican John McCain took his campaign high above the waters of the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, visiting an offshore oil and gas rig and predicting many more like it along the U.S. coasts if he is elected president.
Hoping to highlight his support for new offshore drilling, a hot political issue as Americans face rising energy costs, McCain climbed around open-air platforms, peered at the giant drills and chatted with workers over the roar of machinery.
Aug 17 2008
The Elephant in the Tank
by Andy Grove
EXCLUSIVE: Intel’s former C.E.O. Andy Grove says high-profile plans by Boone Pickens and Al Gore don’t tackle the single most dangerous energy issue facing America.
Oil—wherever it is produced—is priced, sold and consumed in a global marketplace. Whatever the outcome of this existential debate, any incremental oil will be sold to the highest bidder, in the U.S.—or in other countries— most of which have an insatiable appetite for oil.
… We must discipline ourselves to follow a more rigorous approach, which can be hard to do given the enormous importance energy has in our lives.  The plans announced recently by T. Boone Pickens and former Vice President Al Gore provide a good opportunity to think through our strategic options, by means of a comparative look. (See the Portfolio.com Green Machine graphic to find out where investors are putting their cash in the clean-tech game.)
August 8
Know-Nothing Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(NYT) So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.
What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be “insignificant”? Presumably they’re just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, “want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.”
Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don’t count on it.
August 7
Finding more oil has become the first issue of the campaign
(The Economist) the call for more drilling has captured the attention of the media and energised the Republicans…. Now drilling is dominating the airwaves, and the Democrats are on the defensive.
John McCain, a supporter of offshore drilling, has ridiculed Barack Obama for suggesting that Americans should try to conserve fuel by keeping their tyres fully inflated. In response, Mr Obama has softened his opposition to offshore drilling, while denouncing Mr McCain as a lapdog of the oil industry who will do little to bring down prices.
Voters … rate the health of the economy as the biggest problem facing the country and the rising price of energy as the biggest drag on the economy, according to a poll that was conducted last month by the Pew Research Centre.
6 August
McCain, Obama promote nuclear energy plans

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee emphasized the promise, saying his plan to build 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 would help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and cut greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
“If we want to enable the technologies of tomorrow like plug-in electric cars, we need electricity to plug into,” McCain said after touring a nuclear plant about 30 miles south of Detroit.
Democrat Barack Obama is more cautious. While he says nuclear power should be part of U.S. energy plans, Obama said Tuesday the nation must find “safer ways to use nuclear power and store nuclear waste.” He said the focus should be finding new energy sources.
August 5
McCain at Nuclear Plant Highlights Energy Issue
(NYT) Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an “all-of-the-above approach” to addressing the nation’s energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it “safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil.”
August 4
U.S. candidates clash over energy policy
Mike Blanchfield , Canwest News Service
WASHINGTON … In a speech in Michigan, home of the battered U.S. auto industry, Obama said his new energy plan would include incentives to build more fuel-efficient cars, as well as taxing big oil companies to pay for a $1,000 energy rebate for struggling families.
Obama pledged “the full resources” of the federal government to ensure that 10 per cent of the country’s energy needs come from renewable sources by the end of his first term, as part of a plan to eliminate U.S. oil imports from the Middle East and Venezuela.
Obama also said that selling 70 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could bring down prices at the pumps.
… Obama also said Monday that completing the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline with Canada would help ease U.S. dependency on oil.
July 31
Obama Slams McCain’s Energy Plan
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Barack Obama took Exxon Mobil’s report of a record $11.68 billion profit last quarter and his own speech on energy policy and fashioned a rhetorical mortar shell aimed at Senator John McCain.
Mr. McCain’s corporate tax plan, he claimed, would yield $4 billion a year in savings for oil companies while his proposed federal gas tax holiday would pay for half a tank of gasoline over the course of an entire summer.
July 2
To Drill or Not to Drill
(Foreign Affairs) Rapidly rising oil prices have revived the debate over domestic oil production, including the controversial issue of drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In the July/August 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs, Amory and L. Hunter Lovins argued that drilling in ANWR was risky, unnecessary, and a distraction from the real energy debate. With gas prices exceeding $4 per gallon, Republican presidential candidate John McCain now favors domestic offshore oil drilling but remains committed to keeping ANWR off limits. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and many Republican legislators have called for opening ANWR. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama opposes drilling offshore and in ANWR on the grounds that it would have little impact on gas prices. Full text of original essay (July/August 2001)
June 26
The Petro-Manipulators
Timothy Egan
(NYT Op-Ed) Consider the present dilemma: oil doubling over the last year, gas at $4.50 a gallon in places and the oversized influence of speculators in a market where few used to tread. Big investors are free to run up oil futures contracts thanks in part to former Senator Phil Gramm. He is the Texas Republican who co-sponsored the so-called Enron loophole in 2000 at the behest of what was later found to be one of the nation’s biggest criminal enterprises.
Market manipulation seems obvious.
Over the last five years, investment in index funds tied to commodities like energy and food has gone from $13 billion to $260 billion. At the same time, the prices of those commodities have risen 200 percent.
Take away the excess speculators who are in the market purely for the ride, and oil prices could drop by half. That’s the view of Michael W. Masters, a hedge fund manager who’s been advising Congress this year.
June 25
Obama’s fight against ‘dirty oil’ could hurt oil sands
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed he would break America’s addiction to “dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive” oil if he is elected U.S. president — and one of his first targets might well be Canada’s oil sands.
A senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign told reporters it’s an “open question” whether oil produced from northern Alberta’s oilsands fits with the Democratic candidate’s plan to shift the U.S. sharply away from consumption of carbon-intensive fossil fuels.
June 23
Clinton Praises Obama’s Greenhouse Policy, Sort Of
(Planet Ark/Reuters) MIAMI - Former US President Bill Clinton offered faint praise for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s energy policy on Sunday, saying he preferred it to that of Republican rival John McCain.
Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol
Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.
(Economist) Mr McCain sought to show himself to be a tough-minded pragmatist on energy. In the past he has espoused greenery, including a cap-and-trade system designed to reduce carbon emissions. But in a big speech this week he proposed ending a long-standing ban on new offshore oil exploration and drilling. Charlie Crist, Florida’s governor, reversed his earlier opposition to offshore drilling, dutifully backing Mr McCain (some think Mr Crist is a potential vice-presidential nominee). But some other coastal governors and environmental types responded with anger. Mr McCain called for expanding not only the American oil supply but for a greater use of coal and nuclear energy, suggesting that he is not shy of embracing controversial options. The risk for him, however, is that shifting ground, for example on offshore drilling, makes the straight-talker appear to waver because of current high petrol prices.
22 June
(NYT Op-Ed) Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.” More from an angry and articulate Thomas Friedman
June 19
Bush Urges Congress to End Offshore Oil Drill Ban
(Planet Ark/Reuters) WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Congress to end a ban on offshore oil drilling, seeking to address rising consumer angst over record-high gasoline prices with a plan sure to anger environmentalists.
June 18
In Detroit last night, Barack Obama took the stage with Al Gore to tell tough truths — and propose specific policies to galvanize decades of green economic growth.
In Houston today, candidate McCain will tell the people that he used to call “special interests” that just because two oilmen are leaving the White House doesn’t mean the gravy train has to end. Back in 2000, he promised he would “never lose sight” of the importance of protecting our natural heritage. Today his campaign reversed McCain’s longstanding position and endorsed drilling off our coastlines. Oh — and Senator McCain’s reform agenda of getting tough on Big Oil? Now Candidate McCain is against any windfall profits tax to fund renewable energy. More
June 17
McCain Calls for Break With Past on Environment
HOUSTON — Senator John McCain sought to straddle the divide between environmentalists and the energy industry on Tuesday, calling for conservation but also more refineries, more nuclear power plants and the end of a ban on oil drilling off the nation’s coasts.