As oil from the BP spill continues to spread through the Gulf Coast, activists, oil companies and President Obama are pointing to the disaster to influence the debate over clean energy regulation.
In a speech at Carnegie Mellon University yesterday, President Obama pushed for clean energy reform, including more fuel-efficient vehicles and an end to tax breaks for oil companies. He also called for greater reliance on natural gas and nuclear energy, though many would dispute these as clean energy solutions.
The president also pledged to find the votes necessary to get the clean energy bill through the Senate.
But if we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction — if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and the national security costs and the true economic costs — we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.
But some energy experts say that even if the climate legislation gets passed, it won’t have much of an effect on drilling in the Gulf Coast. Right now, the Gulf already provides about 40 percent of American oil production, and deep-water wells are becoming more and more important in off-shore drilling.
And politically, Obama faces a tough sell on the legislation. Some Republican members of Congress have voiced concerns over what new legislation and new taxes could do to the economy, and Lindsey Graham, the one Republican member of the Senate who supported the bill has pulled out of talks.
Meanwhile, environmentalists and their congressional supporters are pushing new regulations on safety, new bans on offshore drilling and a higher cap on the amount of money an oil company has to pay out after a spill — up to $10 billion or more.
Representatives in the oil industry say they are afraid that anger over the BP spill will result in regulations that are too tough, and could result in a loss of jobs.
Last year, the oil and gas industry spent $174.8 million on lobbying.
But companies that drill in shallow water caught a break last week, when the Obama administration said they could continue to drill. The Department of the Interior has stopped drilling in water deeper than 500 feet for six months.
Here’s the deal, the government can do something about this oil spill crisis, first of all anyone who knows anything knows that ignorance is the biggest threat to the united states government, but it is also our best friend. If nasa can invent the microwave and the coldcamera, as well as put scietists in space, and invent smart satelites, if we can send the hubble telescope to the furthest parts of our known galaxy, then we have the right people and the technology is ready to be put to use to stop bp from destroying our oceans and those who depend on the oceans, #1 a boycott of bp gas stations is already going into effect, we can use our laws that promote and prevent trade, utilize our ties with china and russia as well as europe to make our leading nations prevent bp from profiting from its oil recoveries until it stops and pays for the stop of this spill. We lose our fertile oceans we lose our world. The world loses its best and what for? there are other oil companies we can promote in place of bp, and give them more power or threaten to unless bp solves this problem within four weeks. To say the government can do nothing against big buisnesses that deserve a backlash is idiotic, if segragation and slavory could be ended in our country, if hitler stopped, if men could go to the moon, there is an answer, there is a solution, its called give them a national threat that if they dont stop the crisis and pay for it with in four weeks, we will empower there competetors and we will use our power to stop them from bieng profitable. point blank. nation to nation will suffer because of bp, nation to nation can shut them down if they dont stop the oil from spilling, if they dont clean it up then we can within our own country use our power to seize land, and sieze thier land which has thier companies on it, thier oil here in our country to be refied, seize it and the land, and use our laws to empower thier competetors and make an example of them unless they stop the spill, clean up the mess and solve the problem they created, and also any company created by thier board or owners be under the same rules.