State of the Union, Environment Edition
While President Obama spent most of his recent State of the Union address (full speech here) focusing on jobs, the budget, and health care (and rightly so), he also spent a good amount of time discussing environmental concerns. He made some positive remarks about the need to pass an energy and climate bill, but also some disheartening ones about the kinds of energy we should invest in. Here is a breakdown of the bad, the good, and what was left out.
The bad: After drawing attention to the need to transition to a clean energy economy, Obama gave a shout out to special interest groups and energy companies, saying that this transition, “means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.” These three proposed solutions are far from ideal. Nuclear energy is impractical because of the time it takes to build new nuclear reactors, and harmful because of the radioactive waste that is produced has nowhere to go. Offshore drilling for oil will increase our energy independence, but will do nothing to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and will actually cause more environmental degradation in the areas that are drilled. Most types of biofuels produce large amounts of greenhouse gasses while being grown and converted into fuel, so their positive impact on the environment is minimal. Finally, “clean coal” is an industry term for carbon capture and sequestration, which is not currently a marketable technology and which does not reduce the harms of coal mining and disposal.
The good: Despite these less than ideal suggestions, Obama strongly urged the Senate to pass a climate bill: “Yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” This bill is absolutely essential to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, creating a clean energy economy, and advancing a global climate agreement, and Obama was right to endorse it.
The president also gave a slap in the face to climate change deniers, saying, “I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.” He then made the often ignored economic argument for a climate bill, saying, “even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.” Supporters of regulating greenhouse gasses often focus on the environmental benefits of such legislation, without making the economic and national security argument, and Obama was wise to draw in these other perspectives.
The missing: Obama spent very little time talking about renewable energy; wind, solar, and geothermal power that must be the centerpiece of our energy future if we truly want to combat climate change. He also did not mention the words “cap and trade”, instead calling the legislation the “energy and climate bill” and focusing on job creation and innovation instead of on regulation.
What it means: The president clearly wants to drum up bipartisan support for a climate bill. He appealed to both liberals who want large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and conservatives who are worried about the economy and the too much government regulation. And despite his endorsement of unclean energy sources, this bipartisan approach was the right one to take. Stopping climate change should be an issue that people of all ideologies can rally around, and Obama made it clear that it is in everyone’s best interests to do so.
In sum, the state of the environment is compromised. Compromised because of the harm that we are doing to it through over-consumption and the use of dirty energy, but also compromised because of the concessions that will need to be made on both sides in order to pass an effective climate bill.