Working For Jobs

by David Roberts.

Coal-fired power plants sicken and kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, especially those (generally low-income, often minority) Americans who have the misfortune of living near them.

So why would any community allow a coal plant to be built in its midst? Indeed, why would communities pay enormous amounts of money in bribes development assistance for the privilege?

Simple: jobs. Lots of these communities are suffering from blight and high unemployment. They are desperate. And developers play on that desperation with promises of jobs. It may sicken your children, but at least you’ll be able to afford their medicine!

But do those promises come true? According to a new study from the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies, not so much.

Ochs researchers dove in and took a close look at economic conditions before, during, and after six coal plant construction projects, along with the promises that were made and deals struck in advance.

Their results suggest that the promise of jobs was oversold. Overall, “for every one hundred new construction jobs promised, just over half—56 percent—were actually realized.” Over half those new jobs were in one county. In the other four counties studied, “coal plant construction only delivered net increases of 1,730 jobs out of a projected increase of 6,370 jobs—just over 27 percent.” Many of those jobs (1 out of 5) were created in response to “non-local” factors, mainly construction employment trends. And many of the jobs went to workers from outside the counties in question.

They summarize:

These findings strongly suggest that the economic development argument for coal plants is relatively weak, especially when compared with the job creation potential of alternative means of addressing demand for power through energy efficiency.

Indeed.

(NYT’s Tom Zeller Jr. has more.)

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Listed Solar/PV Company/San Jose, NV

Our client is a highly respected, market leading, NYSE listed utility scale solar system design, manufacture and installation organization expanding rapidly across the global marketplace.

As a result of exceptional demand for our client’s products and services, which includes a major supply agreement with one of the world’s largest electrical utility companies, this critical senior level legal position has arisen.

The successful incumbent will be responsible for supporting the project management team to handle all financial issues relating to the project development department, including execution of financial transactions

RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Conducting financial due diligence on acquisitions and structure deals using a variety of financing tools
• Facilitating investment in strategic utility scale project developments
• Evaluating acquisition targets and major capital projects through rigorous financial, strategic and market analysis
• Interpreted and presenting analysis to Company Executives in support of the decision making process
• Managing due diligence and acquisition activities in conjunction with investment and legal counsel
• Working closely with business unit teams to assist with the development and interpretation of strategic market analysis
• Leveraging analysis to strengthen current market positions and penetrate new markets
• Supporting budget/cost forecast updates and processing incurred costs
• Reading and interpreting sales agreements and providing project specific and account specific reconciliations
• Performing financial analysis and reviewing all finance documents and contracts relating to project development

REQUIREMENTS:
• A minimum of 5 years finance and accounting experience
• 3 years experience in project costing
• Familiarity with project finance is highly desirable, especially construction & maintenance
• An understanding of cost of sale and inventory financial close activities
• Structured finance experience, specifically in the renewable energy sector, is preferred
• MBA/MS in Finance
• Mandarin language skills advantageous
• US citizen/green card

SALARY & BENEFITS
• Full time position
• Base salary and performance bonus
• Compensation commensurate with experience

Keywords: job, vacancy, financial transactions, financial analysis, document review, contract review, financial due diligence, project finance, US financing, US tax, structured finance, MBA finance, MS finance, Mandarin, USA, West Coast, California, San Jose


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by Tom Philpott.

Remember neonicotinoids? They’re the widely used class of pesticides that an increasing body of evidence—including from USDA researchers—implicates in the collapse of honeybee populations. Neonicotinoids are marketed by the agrichemical giant Bayer, which reels
in about $800 million in sales from them each year.

Germany
(Bayer’s home country), France, and Slovenia have either banned their
use outright or limited it severely. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA has stood
by its approval of them—even though its own scientists have discredited Bayer’s research purporting to declare neonicotinoids safe for bees, and the USDA’s chief bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, has reported doing research showing them to be highly harmful to bees even in extremely low doses.

Good
news: A government body is reconsidering the decision to approve those
chemicals, based partly on concerns raised by Pettis. Less-good news: That
government body is not our own; it’s in the United Kingdom. Our own EPA has maintained
its approval for the pesticides—and farmers throughout the nation
will soon plant tens of millions of acres of neonicotinoid-treated corn seeds,
which will soon sprout into trillions of corn plants with
neonicotinoid-infused pollen.

From London-based The Independent:

Growing concern about the new generation of pesticides used on 2.5 million acres of U.K. farmland has led one of the Government’s most senior scientific
advisers to order a review of the evidence used to justify their safety.

That scientist, Robert
Watson, is the chief scientific adviser at the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the U.K. version of the EPA.

Watson’s
concern was triggered by two recent studies, The Independent reports.
The first is Pettis’ as yet unpublished study, whose existence was revealed by The Independent in January. The second, according to the newspaper, is new research from the French
National Institute for Agricultural Research, which also found
bees highly vulnerable to neonicotinoids in small doses.

It appears that the pesticides compromise bees’ immune systems, making them susceptible to a viral pathogen called nosema.

Now,
it’s important to note that both Pettis’ work and that of the French
National Institute for Agricultural Research took place in the
laboratory, not the field. That is, they established that neonicotinoids
theoretically pose a grave threat to honeybees. That’s not the same as
showing that they harm them in real-world, corn-field conditions.

But
given the decline of honeybee health, which roughly tracks with the
explosion of neonicotinoid use in the late ‘90s, these studies show
clear cause for grave concern. The coauthor of the Pettis
study, Penn State University entomologist Dennis Van Engelsdorp, has stated [PDF] that their research found severe harm from neonicotinoids at extremely low
levels, “below the limit of detection.” He added: “The only reason we
knew the [dead] bees had exposure [to neonicotinoid pesticides] is
because we exposed them.”

What about field tests? The study presented by Bayer to show that the pesticides
don’t cause harm in real-world conditions has been thoroughly
discredited. The EPA had accepted the study, after holding it without
comment for two years; but then, last year, its own scientists
downgraded it on the grounds that it was flawed, an internal EPA memo leaked in December showed.

Apparently,
to professional entomologists not on the Bayer payroll, the study was
plainly shoddy. James Frazier, professor of entomology at Penn State,
minced no words when I asked him about it in December. “When I looked
at the study,” he told me in a phone interview, “I immediately thought
it was invalid.”

So
we’ve got the theoretical possibility that neonicotinoids cause serious
harm to bees even at extremely low levels; we’ve got one of the few
actual field studies exonerating the pesticide declared invalid; and
we’ve got a catastrophic decline of a species critical to agriculture
that coincides with the rise of said pesticide. You don’t have to be
Sherlock Holmes to conclude that there’s sufficient evidence to halt its
use and subject it to rigorous, independent field study.  

They’re
at least considering that course of action in the United Kingdom. And
they’re taking USDA scientist Pettis quite seriously. True, his research
remains unpublished two years after it was completed. He has told me in
emails that his study is in the review process for publication, but has
no release date yet. He emphasized that the “delays are on my end; not a
conspiracy to keep my data from seeing the light of day.”

Delayed
or not, Pettis’ research has inspired the U.K.‘s version of EPA to publicly
review its decision to green-light neonicotinoids. Furthermore,
Pettis “sits on a panel of leading experts who will review a £10m
[$16 million] research initiative into the decline of bees funded by Defra, two of
Britain’s research councils, the Wellcome Trust and the Scottish
Government,” the Independent reports. He’ll also address the House of
Commons next month to “present his findings on neonicotinoids to MPs
concerned about the possible link between the pesticides and the demise
of bees and pollinating insects.”  

Hmm.
Surely there are members of our analogue to the House of Commons, the
House of Representatives, who are concerned about the possible link
between the pesticides and the demise of bees and pollinating insects?
Perhaps those formidable defenders of the environment, Reps. Henry Waxman
(D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.)? Or Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y), who has been so heroic in
the fight to prevent the meat industry from abusing antibiotics?

Tragically,
it’s probably too late to stop the planting of neonicotinoid-laced
crops during this spring’s growing season. But the long-term health of
our pollinators—and the health of the vast swaths of agriculture that
rely on them—demands serious attention to the mounting concerns
about this highly profitable and ubiquitous class of pesticides.

Related Links:

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Forget the gloom—new ways of living and organizing our economy are flourishing

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Stantec.
CA – California, Bakersfield
Overview: Stantec’s Environmental Management group is dedicated to managing environmental issues professionally and proactively. Our staff of professionals includes specialists in marine biology, wetland science, wildlife biology, soil science, fisheries biology,…

Salary: . Date posted: 03/30/2011

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by Clark Williams-Derry.

Cross posted from Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Great Scott, how did I miss this? Late last month, the EPA released a draft greenhouse gas inventory, showing that net climate warming emissions from the U.S. fell by a whopping 15 percent from 2000 through 2009 [PDF].

A 15 percent decline? Wow. Just wow.

But the story gets even more dramatic. Over the same period, the U.S. population grew by about 9 percent. Combining the two trends, net per capita greenhouse-gas emissions fell by 21 percent over the decade. And most of that reduction occurred prior to 2007—when the economy hadn’t yet slumped, and before energy prices hit the roof.

In case it’s not clear, these reductions made a huge difference. If we’d kept going at 2000’s per capita levels, the nation would have released about 1.5 billion additional tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2009. To give you a sense of the scale, 1.5 billion tons of CO2 is …

More than the direct annual CO2 emissions from all fossil fuels consumed in homes, businesses, and industries in the entire U.S.;

Over four-fifths of the yearly CO2 emissions from fueling the nation’s cars, trucks, trains, boats, and airplanes.

About one and a half times as much CO2 as is soaked up each year by the nation’s forests, grasslands, and other ecosystems.

I’ll dive into the numbers in a moment, but my first reaction to this is simple amazement—not so much at the size of the drop, but more at the fact that it drew so little attention from the press. I might have missed it, but I didn’t even see the story mentioned by major climate bloggers. Why is that? Is climate change now such old news that even a big data release like this elicits only a shrug? Were people afraid to discuss the story, figuring that it would seem like crass gloating over a sour economy? Or has the professional news media become so depopulated that nobody even had time to cover the story?

A few notes on the numbers themselves.

First, like all emissions inventories, this one should be regarded as an estimate, not the gospel truth. That’s especially true since it’s still a draft. In my experience, the EPA’s inventories are comprehensive and use good data, but good doesn’t mean perfect; so I have to assume that some parts contain pretty wide error bars.

Second, a good chunk of the net emissions reductions are due to estimated increase in carbon sequestration by forests—which actually tames my excitement over the trends. I haven’t read deeply enough into the causes for the increase in the sequestration estimates. But sequestration can be a a particularly difficult trend to measure, with the widest error bars. And lots of forces, from weather to temporary shifts in timber and crop prices, can have a huge impact on annual sequestration rates. So while an increase in sequestration is good news, it’s not necessarily a trend that will continue into the future.

Third, there’s a big story that this inventory misses completely. The numbers only cover emissions from within the U.S. itself. So international emissions that are made on our behalf—say, to manufacture goods that we import—are missed entirely. It could be that at least some of the emissions reductions from the U.S. inventory were simply shifted overseas. But it’s anyone’s guess how big that shift really was.

Still, despite these caveats, I’ll take my good climate news where I can take it. And a emissions decline of this magnitude is certainly good news.

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Xanterra Parks & Resorts at Yellowstone National Park/Mammoth Hot Springs, WY

JOB DESCRIPTION

Job title: DIRECTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Basic function: Develop, implement, and maintain comprehensive multi-media environmental strategies and programs for Xanterra Parks & Resorts’ Yellowstone National Park (YNP) lodging, retail, restaurant, transportation, and hospitality operations.

Company Overview

At Xanterra Parks & Resorts (Xanterra), the nation’s largest National and State park concessionaire, environmental stewardship is fundamental to everything we do. In the last several years, Xanterra has established itself as the industry leader in protecting and preserving the environment in more than 21 Xanterra operations in National and State parks and private resorts. The company’s 7,500 employees provide superior guest service to visitors from around the world who visit the company’s 31 hotels and lodges with more than 5,300 guest rooms, 52 retail stores, 68 restaurants, five marinas, nine golf courses, and 1,700 campsites within national and state parks. Each year, more than 18 million people visit the national and state parks where Xanterra operates. These include the national parks at Yellowstone, South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Zion, Crater Lake, Death Valley, Rocky Mountain, Petrified Forest, and Mount Rushmore National Memorial, as well as facilities at eight Ohio State Parks and two privately-owned resorts, Kingsmill Resort in Virginia and the Grand Canyon Railroad in Arizona.

Position & Purpose

Xanterra is seeking an environmental affairs director to serve as the company’s environmental conscience, ambassador and spokesperson, working to make Xanterra’s Yellowstone operations the national leader in environmentally responsible business and tourism practices. This person will lead, influence, educate, and mold Xanterra’s 2,500 employees at Yellowstone into the most environmentally aware and responsible organization in the hospitality industry. This agenda is supported at the highest levels in the company, a key ingredient for success. The Director will participate in designing the methodology for approaching and achieving this direction and drive its application. Few positions in any organization afford such tremendous influence over such unique areas of the world, as well as to the communities in which the company does business. This is a rare opportunity to apply passion, technical knowledge, communication and people skills to facilitate cutting-edge business practices that benefit the local national park environment, as well as the planet.

See www.xanterra.com for more information on the company and its environmental initiatives.

Duties & Responsibilities:

1. Develop, implement, and maintain environmental strategies and programs for Xanterra’s Yellowstone operations consistent with the company’s environmental management system (Ecologix) and ISO 14001 standards. Maintain certification of the EMS under ISO 14001 standards.
2. Work with the General Manager, operations departments, and the corporate Vice President of Environmental Affairs to develop and implement environmental management programs in the following areas:
 Solid waste management
 Energy and water efficiency of operational systems (including renewable energy)
 Pollution prevention and waste reduction
 Sustainable design and construction practices (including the LEED rating system)
 Hazardous materials and waste management
 Air emissions control/permitting
 Environmental communication and education
 Comprehensive affirmative procurement strategies, and
 Underground and aboveground storage tanks (fuel dispensing and storage management).
 Green Retail
 Storm water Management
3. Coordinate with property departments – such as engineering and purchasing – in implementing projects, setting standards, and monitoring results on environmental goals.
4. Develop and implement appropriate training programs to ensure compliance with environmental regulations and company requirements.
5. Ensure legal compliance with local, NPS, state, and federal environmental statutes and regulations and minimize legal liabilities from potential hazards. This may include regulatory requirements with hazardous materials, hazardous waste (RCRA), universal waste, CFCs/halons, asbestos, lead-based paint, PCBs, pesticides, and fuel storage and delivery system management. This includes providing training to staff on changes in regulations affecting operations.
6. Monitor environmental programs for effectiveness and develop projects for improvement, as needed. Monitor regulatory developments and communicate changes affecting company operations to appropriate personnel. Develop new environmental programs and procedures, as necessary.
7. Serve as environmental spokesperson for Xanterra’s Yellowstone National Park operations: communicating with and educating guests and employees; and working with the National Park Service and governmental agencies on resolving environmental challenges and achieving goals.
8. Promote company environmental stewardship with local, regional, and national environmental groups through committee participation and award application/recognition.
9. Research, test, and implement proactive environmental technologies and procedures not only for Yellowstone operations but also to share with other applicable Xanterra operations.
10. Manage the company’s Green Team, holding regularly scheduled meetings and establish goals and objectives for the committee.
11. Measure impact of programs and prepare required reports for Xanterra and the National Park Service. Communicate these results with outside stakeholders.
12. Develop and maintain good working relationships with National Park Service staff, state and federal government agencies, and outside stakeholders.
13. Responsible for the selection and monitoring any environmental consultants and contractors needed to achieve company goals.
14. Prepare and administer the annual financial plan for the environmental affairs department.
15. Maintain records and reports for compliance with all agencies having jurisdiction, including National Park Service, and the State of Wyoming and Montana Departments of Environmental Quality.
16. Oversee the continued implementation and improvements in the green retail store
17. Other duties as assigned.

Desired Qualifications:

1. Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Science or related field, plus minimum five years professional experience, preferably within the hospitality industry, in all aspects of environmental management. While a college degree is required, individual reputation, knowledge and experience in the environmental and sustainability sector will be the key criteria.
2. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with extensive experience in technical writing and public speaking. The Director must communicate effectively with both corporate and field employees to identify opportunities to minimize the environmental impacts of Xanterra’s business practices.
3. He or she will be a thought leader in regard to environmental issues and eco-tourism, and must possess outstanding interpersonal and communication skills, including experience interacting with the media. This person must demonstrate a political sensibility and be keenly sensitive to various constituencies and the diplomacy appropriate for each.
4. The Director must be savvy as to proper business practices and present programs that are practical and financially sound. The Director must genuinely enjoy people and be an effective team player, while also carefully introducing, promoting and driving change. He/She will face rejection from time to time, but must be resilient and continue to plant seeds while being creative in finding alternate routes to the desired outcomes. This will include engaging in healthy debate and losing some battles in order to win the war.
5. The Director needs to have a personality and management style that inspires others, encourages employees to present their ideas and motivates a highly diverse group of people to understand what is expected and how to achieve/own those objectives. He/She must gain the respect of others by virtue of style, character, expertise and example, rather than through force or position.
6. He or she must be highly-organized and have strong administrative and leadership skills, including experience with operating budgets and the related accountability.
7. Experience in environmental report writing including EMS development, ISO 14001 certification, and environmental compliance auditing.
8. Experience in developing environmental initiatives and implementing all phases of a company-wide environmental program in a cooperative government agency setting.
9. Familiarity with environmental laws and regulations as they relate to the hospitality industry, and an ability to keep abreast of this developing and complex field.
10. Well-developed personal computer skills.
11. Proven ability to build productive relationships by positively interacting with coworkers and clients.
12. Ability to live in a remote, seasonally cold, rural environment
13. Passion for national parks and public lands

Appearance Standards:
The position shall follow the appearance standards as outlined in the Xanterra Parks & Resorts Appearance Standards Policy.

Reporting Relationships
This position reports directly to the on-site Regional General Manager of Xanterra’s Yellowstone operations and also indirectly to the Vice President of Environmental Affairs at the corporate office.

Location
This is a full-time, year-round position with offices located at Mammoth Hot Springs, WY, north entrance to Yellowstone National Park, five miles south of Gardiner, Montana.

Benefits and Compensation
Salary commensurate with experience. Benefits package includes 401k, health plan, subsidized housing (single family house), meal plan, and vehicle.

Start date: As soon as possible.

Contact: Email cover letter and resume to Chris Lane, Vice President of Environmental Affairs or call at 303-600-3409 if you have questions. ALSO, YOU MUST APPLY ON LINE AT XANTERRA.COM.


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by Glenn Hurowitz.

The Associated Press is reporting that the White House is insisting to congressional Democrats that they endorse Republicans’ proposed environmental rollbacks.

A Democratic lawmaker familiar with a meeting Wednesday between Obama
and members of the Congressional Black Caucus said the administration
made it clear that some House GOP proposals restricting the
Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory powers would have to make
it into the final bill. In order to characterize the White House’s
position, the lawmaker insisted on anonymity because the meeting was
private.

It’s not clear which proposals the White House might
accept, but those backed by Republicans would block the government from
carrying out regulations on greenhouse gases, putting in place a plan to
clean up the Chesapeake Bay and from shutting down mountaintop mines it
believes will cause too much water pollution. 

This report is likely to be credible, as President Obama failed to mention the Clean Air Act during his major energy speech today—giving his negotiators room to maneuver with Republicans. In addition, the White House has been positioning itself as a friend of the fossil-fuel industry, opening up massive new coal mining equivalent to the construction of 300 new coal-fired power plants and issuing a spate of new Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits.

I must say, it’s not surprising that Obama is choosing to attack core environmental laws. Despite all-time low poll numbers, he seems to believe that voters want him to continue making major concessions to Republicans on the environment, health care, taxes, and other major issues in the interests of seeming bipartisan. Perhaps more importantly, the environmental movement and progressives in general have had little appetite or ability to seriously push back when he attacks even the most basic values.

If that doesn’t change soon, the environmental movement will find this Democratic president dismantling the basic laws that protect Americans’ clean air and water, and they will have done little to stop it.

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by Dan Lashof.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

President Obama today renewed his call to move America forward by reducing our dependence on imported oil and dirty coal at a Georgetown University speech. Meanwhile at the other end of town, members of Congress are working overtime to move us backward by trying to block the EPA from doing its job of setting standards to clean up our cars and power plants.

President Obama set a new goal to reduce U.S. oil imports by one-third by 2025, primarily by accelerating the move to efficient, hybrid, and electric vehicles, and sustainable biofuels. Although he called for some measures to expand domestic production from existing leases, he recognized that we can’t drill our way to energy independence.

The president also renewed his call to get 80 percent of our electricity from clean sources by 2035. His definition of “clean” needs some work, but one thing is clear: we have to replace our aging fleet of dirty coal plants with better ways to recharge our smartphones.

These may seem like disconnected initiatives given that we hardly use any oil to generate electricity. But there is a crucial connection that will grow as we move to electrify our transportation system in order to end our dependence on oil. Plugging our advanced electric cars into old, dirty coal fired power plants does not get us where we need to go. So it absolutely makes sense for the president to advance his oil dependence reduction and clean electricity goals together.

The rubber will meet the road next week as the president and Congress try to reach agreement on a continuing resolution to keep the government open for the rest of the fiscal year. House Republicans are reportedly insisting that dirty air policy riders from their stunningly irresponsible budget billt be included. Meanwhile, in the Senate there could be votes at any time to block clean air safeguards through one or more amendments to an unrelated small business bill.

While the details differ, these various proposals to prevent the EPA from doing its job would directly interfere with achieving the goals the president laid out today. The most important tools the administration has for reducing our oil dependence are strong vehicle fuel efficiency
and pollution standards. The president is rightly proud of the historic standards established jointly by EPA, the Department of Transportation, and the California Air Resources Board covering vehicles produced between now and 2016, and as the White House noted today, the next generation of standards covering 2017-2025 are currently under development. The
president must not allow Congress to block any part of the collaboration among those three agencies, which is key to the effectiveness of these standards.

Similarly, the goal of producing 80 percent of our electricity from clean sources can’t be achieved if dirty power plants are allowed to continue indefinitely to emit unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. There just won’t be much of a market for clean energy sources
of the future if the dirty energy sources of the past are given free rein to keep on polluting. EPA is finally moving to follow the law and the science by setting carbon dioxide pollution standards for power plants. The president must not allow Congress to block this long overdue effort, which is essential to reduce life-threatening pollution and to create a level playing field for clean
energy solutions.

As the president himself noted today, there has been a lot of talk in the past about ending our dependence on oil, but political gridlock has blocked real progress. The president must not allow that to happen this time. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has helpfully noted that the continuing resolution “is a funding bill and a budget bill and it’s not the place for extraneous ideological or political policy to be addressed.” The
president must not waver in that stance.

Related Links:

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CleanTech Property Management Group LLC/Westport, CT

Seeking an experienced and licensed senior energy auditor in Fairfield County, CT.
Responsibilities include:
Perform in-depth energy audits focused on identifying energy conservation project opportunities.
Analyze and record energy performances with the goal of an organizing data into a computer report. From this report, you will design and sell recommendation for energy saving measures that will ultimately make their home or office comfortable, safe and more energy efficient.

Install conservation measures and when needed, work with outside venders to implement improvements.

Review findings of audit with client. Educate clients on energy efficiency measures, methods and programs.

In depth knowledge and understanding of energy wastefulness/efficiency, including HVAC, lighting, building science, envelope, windows and doors.

Must have:
BPI certified, RESNET and familiar with TED or similar. LEED a plus
Drivers license, we provide a company vehicle, but you must be able to report to the office each morning.
Ability to move in smaller spaces including attics and crawl spaces.
Excellent written and communication skills
Knowledge of construction and HVAC
Computer Literary
Sales experience a plus

Compensation: Competitive

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by David Roberts.

Today, President Obama will deliver an address at Georgetown University on the subject of energy security.

This is, potentially at least, an incredibly rich subject area. It is littered with facts and trends that few Americans understand. Framed properly, it could help voters re-imagine America’s place in a resource-constrained, climate-heated world. It could help lay the foundation for cross-cutting and unconventional political coalitions centered around military readiness and business competitiveness rather than “environmentalism.”

Back down here on earth, though, it looks like the White House is going to half-ass it.

I was on a call yesterday with “senior White House officials” (SWHO) and got a preview. My overall impression is of vintage Obama: groping for the Reasonable Path between Two Extremes. Sometimes that trope works, but Obama has leaned on it far, far too often (see: Libya speech).

In particular, it doesn’t work well for oil. The core truth is that for the U.S., oil problems mostly have to do with supply and oil solutions mostly have to do with demand. America becomes safer from oil by using less. From the Democratic establishment, only retiring Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is telling the public that truth.

Obama is opting instead for the conventional Dem approach, a shapeless blob of supply and demand, old and new, trivial and meaningful, sure to satisfy none of his opponents and activate none of his supporters. Again. I doubt it will rise above the background “blah blah foreign oil” voters have been hearing since the ‘70s.

The overall goal, in “a little over a decade,” is to reduce U.S. oil imports by one-third. I don’t know if that means one-third less than today’s levels, one-third less than projected imports for 2020, or one-third less as a percentage of overall oil use.

In 2009, the U.S. imported just over 4.2 billion barrels of “crude oil and products.” That’s a little over half the oil we used. To reduce that number by a third by 2020, we’ll need to be finding 1.4 billion new barrels a year of either domestic supply or “negabarrels,” i.e., barrels not used.

(Just as a side note: the top two U.S. oil suppliers are Canada and Mexico, and Canada’s where the dirtiest stuff is.)

The president will focus on four areas, listed to us in this order:

1. Domestic production.

Yes, this was first.

The lead talking point was a variant on the House Dems’ “use it or lose it” shtick, which has been around for years and, from what I can tell, never really caught on. The Interior Department released a report yesterday showing that “more than two-thirds of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico and more than half of onshore leases on federal lands remain idle, neither producing nor under active exploration and development by companies who hold those leases.”

The SWHO said we need “new, better incentives” to lure oil companies into drilling on the commons the public has leased to them.

During the Q&A, I asked why this was listed first, since there are no credible studies showing that U.S. oil, drawn from 2 percent of the world’s reserves, can make a substantial dent in oil or gasoline prices or reduce our vulnerability to price spikes. SWHO, a smart, knowledgeable person, conceded that the “significant gains” will be in efficiency (down at No. 4). Drilling is just a “piece of the puzzle.”

2. Natural gas.

See: Pickens Plan.

3. Biofuels.

As always, the administration loves “advanced” biofuels, because getting advanced is key to winning the future. They aim to break ground on at least four advanced biorefineries in the next two years. After all, America deserves better than … oh, wait, lemme check my notes … ah, I see they love corn ethanol too. Oy.

4. Efficiency.

Here’s where the biggest gains will be had. They’ll mostly be had via auto efficiency standards that have already been hashed out. SWHO promised that the White House would keep working on auto standards for 2017-forward and new standards for heavy trucks. It’s telling that fuel standards (already underway) are the best they can offer on efficiency.

What a better plan would look like

The paucity of imagination shown by Obama’s list is just dismally depressing. It’s telling that he says nothing of electric cars, rail infrastructure, public transit, smart growth, congestion pricing, a gas tax, bicycles, or simple conservation. He is choosing fare straight from the barren cupboard of Beltway conventional wisdom, contenting himself with the tepid “center” of a conversation dominated by the interests of plutocrats. It might garner sober nods on cable news, but the American people deserve something more ambitious, innovative, inspiring, and honest.

To get some sense of what a better oil security plan would look like, check out what Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) released last year. It doesn’t bother with increased production at all—it’s purely a plan for how to reduce oil use. Here’s where he gets the savings, and how much:

That’s reducing demand enough to wipe out virtually all oil imports by 2030. And there’s more that could be done.

I really do think that energy security is an area where Obama could make waves. A muscular climate-hawk stance on energy security could shake up some stale partisan debates and generate some new coalitions. But that’s not going to happen if Obama takes this half-ass approach.

Related Links:

Obama to reduce oil imports by a third via magic

Drinking game for big Obama energy speech today

Alexis Madrigal chats about boom-and-bust fossil fuels and the promise of cheap electricity

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