President Obama keeps on pushing his “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, never mind that some of those energy sources are causing the oceans to rise and the planet to ail.
In a new interview with Time, he highlights his differences with Mitt Romney over a wind-industry tax credit and fossil-fuel subsidies:
I want to continue to invest in things like wind energy. Governor Romney wants to continue $4 billion worth of subsidies to the oil companies.
But then he goes on to pay homage to oil, natural gas, and ever-elusive notion of “clean coal”:
If we’re going to be serious about energy independence, then we can’t just have a knee-jerk opposition to the incredible resources that we have in our country. We’ve got to have an all-of-the-above strategy that develops oil and gas and clean coal along with wind and solar. …
I think there’s a lot more progress that we can make on the energy front, not only developing traditional sources of energy — the natural-gas boom, I think, could have huge impact on our energy independence as well as geopolitical implications, making us less reliant on other countries for energy. But also the work that we need to do to become more energy efficient — building on the doubling of fuel-efficiency standards on cars — I want to make sure that we’re increasing energy efficiency in buildings and schools and hospitals, which could put people back to work and save us money in the long run.
Yes, Obama’s been taking action lately to make our cars and trucks and factories much more efficient, and he’s been talking to college students about climate change, if not the rest of us.
But he still thinks he has to embrace dirty ol’ fossil fuels to win over the diminishing ranks of the undecideds.