Working For Jobs

by Agence France-Presse.

PITTSBURGH, Penn. - – President Barack Obama Wednesday
vowed to find the votes to pass a stalled energy bill, saying the Gulf of
Mexico oil catastrophe showed the need to “aggressively” seek a clean
energy future.

“The only
way the transition to clean energy will succeed is if the private sector is
fully invested in this future—if capital comes off the sidelines and the
ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed,” he said in a speech at
Carnegie Mellon University.

“The only
way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution,” Obama
said, noting that the House of Representatives has already passed a
climate-change bill, but legislation is now stalled in the Senate.

“The votes
may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming
months,” said Obama.

“I will
make the case for a clean energy future whenever and wherever I can, and I will
work with anyone to get this done. And will will get it done,” the president added. “The next
generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last
century.”

Obama also said
that the Gulf of Mexico oil “catastrophe” might be the result of “human error—or
corporations taking dangerous shortcuts that compromised safety.”

“But we
have to acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles
beneath the surface of the Earth—these are risks that are bound to increase,
the harder oil extraction becomes,” the president said.

“We also
have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be
the vision we have for our children and grandchildren,” he said, arguing
that the time had come to aggressively embrace a “clean energy
future.”

The president
spoke of the need to make homes, businesses, and trucks more efficient, said
natural-gas reserves would need to be tapped, and mentioned his plan to expand
nuclear power plants.

“It means
rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies so we can
prioritize investments in clean energy research and development,” he said.

Prospects for
the energy bill in the Senate remain uncertain, following the collapse of a
bipartisan effort to pilot it through the chamber in the runup to crucial
midterm elections in November.

Some experts
question whether the year-long battle to enact health-care reform drained the
kind of political capital Obama would need to get the bill through the Senate
in a highly polarized political environment.

The bill
essentially puts a price on carbon in an effort to discourage global warming
emissions, in a phased process designed to make the transition to a new energy
economy painless.

Conceptually,
the bill also seeks to develop alternative energy sources and to wean the
United States off foreign oil from volatile regions of the world.

In his remarks
at Carnegie Mellon, Obama made no mention of his earlier plan to allow some
expansion of offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive new energy plan.

Last week, Obama
unveiled moves to suspend new oil drilling and exploration following the Gulf
disaster, after reviewing an Interior Department report into the massive oil
spill. The government extended an existing moratorium on deepwater drilling and
suspended issuing new permits for six months. Planned oil exploration in two
locations off the coast of Alaska was suspended, while a pending lease sale in
the Gulf of Mexico and another proposed for off the coast of Virginia were
called off.  Action also was suspended on
33 deepwater exploratory wells

Related Links:

Six ways BP’s oil spill is seeping into politics

Obama’s free ride for oil industry appointees must stop

Louisianans take a break from oil-spill angst to celebrate local seafood

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist