Above is a political cartoon about energy, from 2008.  In his latest email Bill McKibben of 350.org says,

“Most of us like what President Obama campaigned for. But after taking office, he has not acted courageously on climate and energy issues. In fact, just a month ago he ended a longstanding moratorium on new offshore oil drilling. He told Americans it was safe. Hopefully this tragedy will be a wake up call that can help President Obama see that he was wrong.”

It is unlikely that President Obama will ‘wake up’ and see he was wrong about anything having to do with drilling for oil.   There is ample evidence that President Obama intends for the use of fossil fuels to grow a lot in the next few years.   There is little  indication that he feels drilling for oil in the oceans around the United States is something we should not do, even after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank and now is gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

To say this is disappointing is an understatement.   ‘Business as usual’ is not really what we expected from President Obama.  The reason I finally ended up supporting President Obama (after supporting several other people) was because he said we have to fight climate change with the equivalent of an “Apollo program”.  By November 2008,  I believed it was realistic to think that he would, as a Democrat, fight climate change seriously,  and work to end our dependence on fossil fuels.  His campaign rhetoric on climate change and energy was the main reason many environmentally-aware people voted for him.  But now, at this point, I don’t believe Obama ever intended to fight climate change seriously,  and that it was all just a lot of campaign-speak.   It’s seems to me now that his campaign promises to  “environmental types” was just to placate us and get us to vote for him.   President Obama is our first Greenwash President.

The reasons I no longer trust Obama will do the right thing on climate are many:  he wants to give billions in government money to “clean coal” technology, which is like throwing money down the toilet.  Coal will never be clean.  Surely he knows that.   He wants to give coal and other fossil fuel companies big allowances in the future energy and “climate” cap and trade bill — a bill that has been endorsed by anti-environmentalists and by big oil companies.  He wants us to start drilling offshore for oil again, in deep pockets of oil miles under the ocean surface.  (To what end?  It will still run out.)  And he never intended for the U.S. to stop using oil, until it was all gone.  He never intended for us to stop using coal and he has even called natural gas “clean”.  It is clear the President Obama feels oil and coal will be a part of our energy sources until at least 2035, (despite the problem of peak oil having [...]