At Wednesday night's debate, in the course of arguing that he is not overly beholden to his party or interest groups, Obama said something that is predictably provoking umbrage among enviros: "I support clean coal technology. Doesn't make me popular with environmentalists."
To many greens, this is just the latest insult from a campaign that has again and again offered support to nuclear power, clean coal, natural gas, offshore drilling, and other environmental bugaboos. Outraged linguistic analysis like the kind found in this comment is common.
Needless to say I have no brief for dirty energy, but politically speaking, I think Obama's campaign strategy on energy has been both necessary and quite brilliant, if largely unheralded.
To begin with, let's acknowledge a couple of baseline political facts.
First: Barack Obama is a black liberal with a Muslim name and a Kenyan father whose political career was born in inner city Chicago.
Contemplate that for a moment. It's easy to forget just how wildly, cosmically unlikely it is for someone like that to be competing in, much less on the verge of winning, a presidential election in the United States. It defies logic, history, and, I don't know, physics. It's a miracle. Which is just to say the guy has zero room for error. His job has been to overcome the many built-in presumptions against him and reassure middle America -- particularly voters in swing states -- that he's a reasonable, post-partisan, unexotic guy. Of all national candidates in American history, this one has the least room to risk looking radical.
Second, a fact that many enviros are loathe to recognize: most Americans do not hate dirty energy. They hate oil companies in a populist sort of way, but they do not hate oil, or coal, nuclear power, natural gas, or anything else they think might boost supply and lower prices. To the extent they've thought about energy at all, they have a vaguely all-of-the-above outlook, which strikes them as common sense. They're sure as hell not ready to bet their future on solar and wind.
Third, Obama's aspiration has always been not just to lock up all Kerry's states but to flip a few key red states like Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Nevada. That means that he needs the votes of working class whites, many of whom have deep roots in extractive industries like coal. Condemning coal entirely would put Obama irredeemably outside the pale in places like south and southwest Virginia.
Fourth, Obama has the vote of committed enviros. He just does. They'll never go to McCain. His rhetoric is going to focus on voters he can bring over from the other side.
So that's the political context. If Obama came out four-square against coal, nuclear, oil, and natural gas, if he tried to pitch a climate/energy plan based entirely on renewables and efficiency, he would get tagged as an "extreme environmentalist" by McCain, the press, and probably a majority of Democrats. The environmental movement would love for him to stake that claim and have that argument (it's overdue). Obama, however, would prefer to win the election.
In short, Obama simply cannot, as a matter of political strategy, afford to take the kinds of positions and say the kinds of things enviros want. I know some folks might dispute this, and I suspect I won't be popular for making this argument. But I'm guessing Plouffe and Axelrod have polling out the wazoo and are acting accordingly.
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Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:41 am
17 Oct 2008
Obama can do no wrong.
Obama is perfect.
Obama likes coal...so Lefties like coal.
Why are you making fun of Obama?
You must be a mean old man.
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Pangolin Posted 3:48 am
17 Oct 2008
It's still moving and the fangs still have venom but it's dead for all practical purposes. The wild price swings on Wall Street are a product of various players cycling through capitulation, denial, bargaining and grief in no particular order.
Until sustainable energy inputs exceed energy output with no net habitat loss of wild environments we're playing cards with a burning deck. Obama can't tell people that straight out.
Put the Carbon Back
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:49 am
17 Oct 2008
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sindark Posted 4:27 am
17 Oct 2008
a sibilant intake of breath
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Pangolin Posted 4:44 am
17 Oct 2008
Put the Carbon Back
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Charles Barton Posted 5:05 am
17 Oct 2008
Charles Barton
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:04 am
17 Oct 2008
Suburbs first need to "in-fill", as the not-very-helpful term has it, that is, construct town centers/store centers that are central, thus decreasing the need for long car trips; then, lay down rail, not light-rail, lines into city centers. I'd then push for electric cars (souped-up golf carts) to get to the town center/rail head, but that might come later. Light rail shouldn't be put in nondense areas.
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josullivan58 Posted 6:10 am
17 Oct 2008
To some degree a committed environmentalist president is like environmentally responsible oil-drilling, they don't exist. Politics and drilling are dirty businesses. Nobody involved with them is untouched.
An environmentalist president will look for the best realistic possibilities. I think Obama has already in reminding us that we already have an enacted and proven very successful law that the Supreme Court ruled covers greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act.
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GRLCowan Posted 6:39 am
17 Oct 2008
Unwise to keep saying that. Silicates naturally sequester CO2. We know the consequences of accelerating this process enough to start atmospheric CO2 concentrations back down will not exceed that of an annual worldwide precipitation of 0.1 mm of inert carbonate dust.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, author of How fire can be tamed
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:33 pm
17 Oct 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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randino Posted 11:32 pm
17 Oct 2008
The fact of the matter is that most people who say they are for change in this country - from environmentalists to pacifists - are totally clueless on how change is made in this country. When it comes to electoral politics their IQs enters the realm of negative numbers.
It is because they are - like most Americans - addicted to perfectionism. To the obsessive separating of the goats from the sheep. This is totally American from our protestant roots, where a disagreement over one obscure passage of bliblical text could cause communities to split, with the most aggrieved population heading off into the wilderness so they would not have to deal with the other side - who were surely in league with Satan and headed for damnation.
The only reason that I have maintained my equanimity through all of this, is that before the election really got rolling, I read David Kennedy's Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929 to 1945. This is a book on how change is made in America. Not pretty but the truth. Pick it up. If the O man wins, start reading it. You will profit greatly by it.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
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Wolverine Posted 3:36 am
18 Oct 2008
And if you think that Obama is really a closet progressive who will not do all the horrible things he's saying, it's time to wake up and face reality: Obama is from Illinois and has always strongly supported the coal and nuclear industries, is liberal -- not progressive -- on most issues, and is a typical politician in that he'll say and do whatever it takes to get into and stay in office.
No one running for office is going to take really strong environmental positions, like reducing overpopulation with a one-child-family policy, eliminating the most harmful industries like auto, oil, and chemical, and generally simplifying our lifestyles. But people like Obama could at least take positions against horrors like coal, nuclear, and oil by graphically showing people how destructive these industries are. For example, every time any oil issue, such as gas prices, arises, Obama could show pictures of birds and marine mammals covered with oil. That would be the morally correct way to deal with voters whose first reaction to everything is to revert to their most selfish instincts. Pandering to those people deserves no respect or praise.
And one more thing. To say that Obama is the only place for environmentalists to go is either wrong or a lie, depending on whether the person saying it knows better. I voted for Cynthia McKinney -- take that identity politics people, I voted for a black and a woman -- and my choices were her or Ralph Nader.
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GRLCowan Posted 4:29 am
18 Oct 2008
How soon we forget we're supposed to pretend to oppose natural gas as we would any fossil fuel.
Failing to oppose a "horror" like nuclear energy does not endear Obama to a venal, gas-loving part of his civil service base, but they, and the environmentally unconcerned cohort among the publically funded in general, are a minority within a minority.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, author of How fire can be tamed
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Colin Wright Posted 7:38 am
18 Oct 2008
So we may have to broaden the kinds of coalitions we need and think up new strategies. Not that there aren't lessons from that era!
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Russ Posted 8:50 am
18 Oct 2008
Today oil, soil, metals, are all depleted. It's like the difference between having your car stolen but getting it back in one piece, as they eventually did back then, as opposed to getting it back, but it's totalled.
That's what we face now.
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randino Posted 9:35 am
18 Oct 2008
Mike Davis is one of the most brillant progressive writers currently active. His City of Quartz is a modern classic. He did raise some good issues about the inappropriateness of the New Deal to our current situation. However, what I was getting at with the example of Freedom from Fear, is the description of how a really very conservative, moderate yet visionary president FDR moved that ball down the field. Whenever I hear about people bitching and moaning about how cautious and pragmatic Obama is, I have to smile. Because most of them consider FDR to be second only to Lincoln as one of the best presidents we have ever had. And let me assure you, the progressive community in the 1930s looked upon FDR as being a very mixed bag as well. But he was effective. Something purists rarely are.
Finally it is not Obama's job to make the change we want. It is our job. FDR always had people kicking his ass forward. I am working my heart out for Obama, and I would not hesitate to throw a picket line in front of his White House his first day of work. An active citizenry is what will keep him honest, and MAKE him do what we want.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
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Colin Wright Posted 2:14 pm
18 Oct 2008
And I'm not as pessimistic as Davis either. Although we can see the problems that lie ahead (peak oil, climate disruption, possible financial collapse, etc) it's harder to foresee the kinds of creative solutions and movements that might be brewing beneath the surface. If all we can imagine is descent into barbarism, then there is no hope at all even for the possibility of a rapproachment with nature and global society.
In fact, I was just listening to a podcast of Paul Ehrlich (at http://ecoshock.org) in which he ended by bringing up how our attitudes to women and minorities has changed rapidly over a few decades. (Tom Hayden says some similar things in the most recent ecoshock podcast.) Perhaps some changes are brewing as to how we view social class and the planet? Who knows?
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Wolverine Posted 2:35 am
19 Oct 2008
On the other hand, those of you who think that Obama is going to do significant positive things once in office are deluding yourselves. I realize that things are really awful and have been getting worse for a long time so that we all badly want some positive change and are looking for it wherever possible, but get real! Show me one place where Obama will do something good that will make a significant change on the big issues: he supports imperialist war -- he just wants to move U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and attack Pakistan -- he promotes propaganda about "terrorists" and "terrorism," which are complete lies concocted to get the public to support more imperialistic military actions in support of U.S. businesses -- mainly the oil industry -- and to create even more of a police state, he supports the coal, nuclear, and oil industries, opposes certain abortions and uses the dishonest term "partial birth abortion" (there's no such thing, it's a "late term abortion"), and has virtually the identical position as McCain on the current economic situation (read some real economists and ignore the corporate propaganda to know what's really needed and what won't work). (Aside from his disgusting position opposing late term abortions, Obama does have a better position on abortion than McCain, which is the only issue he's discussed where I see a significant difference.)
Obama is clearly a better human being than McCain and I too hope that when he's in office things will get significantly better. But protests fall on deaf ears nowadays; it takes a major rebellion to get the attention of politicians, and they usually respond to it with military or police force, not by considering a change to policies that are repugnant to the public. Counting on protests, letters, or other pressure to make Obama do what we want is just not realistic, sorry.
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:51 am
19 Oct 2008
Now, Obama is definitely better than McCain in terms of health care, a very important issue (that we should have resolved 50 years ago). He's also better on a number of environmental issues -- and the difference between Democratic and Republican administrations is often not necessary policy, but execution. So, for instance, I would expect a much better EPA from Obama, and less craven rolling over to Big Ag/Coal/Oil, etc.
I also think that by the end of his first term, we will be pretty much out of Iraq, and the stepping up in Afghanistan will be much smaller.
But the real question is, how will great social change take place? historically, massive grassroots movements have been the main (but not only) way this happens. Occasionally, the elites actually see more than 2 inches in front of their face: so, for instance, they are building high-speed rail networks in Europe, that didn't take huge marches.
But in the U.S., I think Congresspeople will have to fear that they will lose their seats before they do anything significant. So I predict that the next wave of grassroots action, if it happens, will occur when people start voting for the right people, probably put forward by coalitions of the most progressive organizations.
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