Obama must either ditch his all-of-the-above energy strategy
or forget about leaving a climate-healing legacy.
By Janet Redman
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| "All of the above" is not a serious climate change strategy |
If President Barack
Obama wants to make action on climate change a legacy of his administration, he
better do a lot more in the next three years than his lackluster performance in
this year’s State of the Union address.
Instead of outlining
an approach to build a strong economy for shared prosperity, grounded in
physical reality, he doubled down on his tired “all of the above” energy
strategy that no one (at least no one that takes climate change seriously) can
get behind.
I know it’s a bummer we
can’t have everything all the time. I mean, I’d love to drop 20 pounds on the
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream diet. But it doesn’t work that way. As Obama said
“we have to make tough choices.” When the way we act is at odds with the
outcomes we want, we have to stop what we’re doing and change course.
And he can’t hope to
stave off more climate disruptions like the floods, fires and droughts already
hitting communities across the U.S. and keep throwing his
weight behind natural gas fracking.
Here’s the reality
that the administration can’t seem to face: Natural gas isn’t a bridge to the
future.
It’s more of the same.
Natural gas is a
fossil fuel, so it releases carbon dioxide when it’s burned to generate power.
But even worse for the climate, drilling leaks methane — a greenhouse gas with 34 times the
global warming potential of carbon dioxide. That means the difference
between burning coal and natural gas would be negligible and
that the emissions reductions he cited evaporate.
And the kicker is that
the pollution standards Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to
draft for new power plants wouldn’t actually result in any pollution reductions
from gas-fired plants.
On the international
front, it’s much of the same. Obama tipped his hat to Power Africa, an
initiative he announced on a trade mission to Sub Saharan nations where massive
oil and gas fields have recently been discovered.
He says the initiative is
about energy access and ending poverty, but the International Energy Agency
asserts that mini- and off-grid renewable energy alternatives like solar and
wind power are the lowest-cost option to reach the vast majority of energy poor
families. A little disturbing, then, that Power Africa ispoised to
support — you guessed it — natural gas.
So I don’t get it.
Obama said he wants to quit giving the oil, gas and coal industries $4 billion
a year of taxpayers’ money, but he also promised to “cut the red tape” for
fossil-fuel infrastructure expansion and help businesses invest billions in
dirty energy at home and overseas.
If he was serious
about investing in a clean energy future, he would have talked about divesting
from dirty energy — something UN Secretary
General Ban Ki Moon, World Bank
president Jim Kim and UN climate
convention chief Christiana Figueres have each called for in
recent days.
Heck, Obama himself told Americans
to divest last June during his Climate Action Plan unveiling.
I wish he had used the address to outline a concrete commitment to shift resources to
solar and wind power, reduce overall energy consumption, and break the
stranglehold of moneyed fossil fuel interests on government efficiency to build
shared prosperity in all of our communities.
While I applaud Obama
for pushing back against anti-science climate deniers from the irresponsible
right, he still has his head in the sand. To be remembered as a leader on
climate, Obama must abandon his inherently contradictory strategy that works at
cross-purposes and direct his attention toward building a climate-resilient new
economy powered by renewable energy.
Janet Redman directs
the Climate Policy Program at the Institute
for Policy Studies. IPS-dc.org