You’re hearing more and more voices on the left (including this one), saying Barack Obama can’t get behind initiatives and really make things happen. Health care reform and banking regulations are two frequently cited examples.
It’s not universally true. There are times when this administration moves with surprising speed and efficiency. Just last week, President Obama put a task force on a 180-day deadline to figure out how to “overcome barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with the goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects on line by 2016.”
And I’ll bet he gets – if not his lofty goal – at least a big, thick report with plenty of recommendations for subsidies, because… Oh right, you may not know what CCS stands for. It’s “carbon capture and storage.”
The idea is that through the miracle of technology, we can capture the CO2 that would otherwise be emitted from the burning of coal and pump in deep underground, where it will never leak out into the atmosphere, thus allowing us to continue using our plentiful coal resources without worrying about global warming.
It’s a myth. It doesn’t exist and never will exist. Carbon capture and storage has been studied for 20 years and we’re not even sure how it would work theoretically, much less in a “widespread, cost-effective” way. We know we can spend outrageous amounts of money trying to grab the CO2 and push it underground. No one thinks it will stay put. The myth, however, is convenient because it allows the people who mine and ship and burn coal – the one substance that is killing our planet more than any other – to keep on with business as usual.
Mr. Obama has given civil servants 10 years to bring the myth to life, in a move deliberately intended to evoke John F. Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon. The moon was not a myth.
Last year’s stimulus package included $3.8 billion for CCS and the new task force – well, like I said – more subsidies for the project. There was nothing like $3.8 billion in the stimulus package for renewable energy sources like solar or wind, even though those technologies are not myths, they’re proven sources of clean energy that are free, once the solar panels or wind turbines are built.
That last sentence explains all you need to know. Because sun and wind are free, no money changes hands selling them, no huge profits are made, so sun and wind can’t afford a big DC lobby like the coal lobby. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like wind and solar aren’t global, billion-dollar businesses. They are and they’ll get bigger. But they’re not coal (or oil). Unfortunately, the intellectual property for sun and wind technologies, which the US owned twenty years ago, is now controlled by Germany and China. We’ve fallen behind, but it’s still possible to catch up. It’s not possible to catch up if we waste our subsidies (and therefore the brainpower of our engineers) on chimeras like CCS.
Mr. Obama gets all this, but he used to be the senator from Illinois and downstate Illinois is coal country. So is Indiana and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Ohio. Mr. Obama won all those states in 2008. He’d like to win them again in 2012 and he’d like Democrats to win in those states later this year. (West Virginia and Wyoming are coal states too and although he didn’t win them, Mr. Obama would like to make inroads.)
Which brings us to the Supreme Court and its decision last month in the case of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. The five-justice majority ruled there should be no limits on the amount of money corporations can spend on advertising supporting or attacking electoral candidates. The floodgates are open.
Mr. Obama, to his credit, disagreed with the ruling and went so far as to scold the justices as they sat before him at the State of the Union address (and Justice Samuel Alito sassed Mr. Obama back to his face).
So even though President Obama disagrees with what the court has done, he recognizes the new reality. That reality says that unless the Democrats kneel before King Coal and quick, King Coal’s lobbyists will line up the tee vee ads and machine-gun Democratic candidates in coal country this fall. Plain and simple.
Mr. Obama’s doing what he has to do to keep his party (and maybe – or maybe not -his majority) alive in this election cycle. All it will cost is his children’s future. Our children’s future, too.
Quid Pro Coal
You’re hearing more and more voices on the left (including this one), saying Barack Obama can’t get behind initiatives and really make things happen. Health care reform and banking regulations are two frequently cited examples.
It’s not universally true. There are times when this administration moves with surprising speed and efficiency. Just last week, President Obama put a task force on a 180-day deadline to figure out how to “overcome barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with the goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects on line by 2016.”
And I’ll bet he gets – if not his lofty goal – at least a big, thick report with plenty of recommendations for subsidies, because… Oh right, you may not know what CCS stands for. It’s “carbon capture and storage.”
The idea is that through the miracle of technology, we can capture the CO2 that would otherwise be emitted from the burning of coal and pump in deep underground, where it will never leak out into the atmosphere, thus allowing us to continue using our plentiful coal resources without worrying about global warming.
It’s a myth. It doesn’t exist and never will exist. Carbon capture and storage has been studied for 20 years and we’re not even sure how it would work theoretically, much less in a “widespread, cost-effective” way. We know we can spend outrageous amounts of money trying to grab the CO2 and push it underground. No one thinks it will stay put. The myth, however, is convenient because it allows the people who mine and ship and burn coal – the one substance that is killing our planet more than any other – to keep on with business as usual.
Mr. Obama has given civil servants 10 years to bring the myth to life, in a move deliberately intended to evoke John F. Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon. The moon was not a myth.
Last year’s stimulus package included $3.8 billion for CCS and the new task force – well, like I said – more subsidies for the project. There was nothing like $3.8 billion in the stimulus package for renewable energy sources like solar or wind, even though those technologies are not myths, they’re proven sources of clean energy that are free, once the solar panels or wind turbines are built.
That last sentence explains all you need to know. Because sun and wind are free, no money changes hands selling them, no huge profits are made, so sun and wind can’t afford a big DC lobby like the coal lobby. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like wind and solar aren’t global, billion-dollar businesses. They are and they’ll get bigger. But they’re not coal (or oil). Unfortunately, the intellectual property for sun and wind technologies, which the US owned twenty years ago, is now controlled by Germany and China. We’ve fallen behind, but it’s still possible to catch up. It’s not possible to catch up if we waste our subsidies (and therefore the brainpower of our engineers) on chimeras like CCS.
Mr. Obama gets all this, but he used to be the senator from Illinois and downstate Illinois is coal country. So is Indiana and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Ohio. Mr. Obama won all those states in 2008. He’d like to win them again in 2012 and he’d like Democrats to win in those states later this year. (West Virginia and Wyoming are coal states too and although he didn’t win them, Mr. Obama would like to make inroads.)
Which brings us to the Supreme Court and its decision last month in the case of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. The five-justice majority ruled there should be no limits on the amount of money corporations can spend on advertising supporting or attacking electoral candidates. The floodgates are open.
Mr. Obama, to his credit, disagreed with the ruling and went so far as to scold the justices as they sat before him at the State of the Union address (and Justice Samuel Alito sassed Mr. Obama back to his face).
So even though President Obama disagrees with what the court has done, he recognizes the new reality. That reality says that unless the Democrats kneel before King Coal and quick, King Coal’s lobbyists will line up the tee vee ads and machine-gun Democratic candidates in coal country this fall. Plain and simple.
Mr. Obama’s doing what he has to do to keep his party (and maybe – or maybe not -his majority) alive in this election cycle. All it will cost is his children’s future. Our children’s future, too.
© Mark Floegel, 2010