PBS Newshour, description:
The Obama administration announced a plan to significantly cut methane emissions produced by gas and gas wells by the year 2025 through executive action. Judy Woodruff talks to Coral Davenport of The New York Times and Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University about President Obama’s strategy in addressing climate change and how environmentalists and the industry are reacting to the proposal.
Obama strikes again? More like Obama strikes out. Did you catch the part about these new regulations not effecting existing fracking infrastructure? 2025 a the cut off date? What a joke.
Obama is pushing on his end. Citizens have to push on their end. Sorry, no easy answers, no one is going to rescue us, but us.
You’re right. There are no easy answers. But here’s an Obama quote from 2012 in Cushing Oklahoma.
“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.”
How can you hear this and not treat every “action” he takes with skepticism, rather than these breathless lines about “striking again?”
Last December his administration lifted a 40 year ban on exporting light crude oil to the international market. The general liberal base thinks his “veto” of the KXL actually means something. Adding legitimacy to Obama’ approach is a mistake, in that it fuels public ignorance of what is taking place.
We’re looking at an ice free arctic summer before these methane regulations apparently take full effect.
He’s not pushing. He’s green washing. It gives the appearance of meaningful change while not meaningfully challenging the corporate state death machine. By framing it as “pushing” or “striking again” it reinforces a destructive narrative that we share some kind of common struggle with Obama, but as a Wall Street funded politician, he is in greater alignment w/ oil giants than average people.
Green-washing is going to get a lot more common as the years click by. Pandering to concerned citizens while insuring nothing meaningful gets done. The 2014 Princeton study should be getting a 50 megawatt spotlight on it, and instead it wallows in obscurity on this side of the Atlantic. The correlation between the average voter’s wants, and actual legislation is zero.
http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
Quote from the study…
“When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.”
I agree with Peter. It all stems from the mistaken notion electorates have about politicians. Politicians sway to whatever pushes them.
‘I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it’ – FDR
An electorate that thinks they can vote and go home is in for a rude shock.
Obama seems to be making the same offer. I have no idea why anyone would have any shred of doubt about Obamas views on energy or environment given his first term’s catch phrase “All of the above”. It might as well have been “Drill, baby, drill”.
Only Fukushima, the Gulf Oil Spill, and the Keystone and Climate marches have “made him do it”.
The best part of the mandate is that it would increase methane emission monitoring in new facilities, which is less than stringent currently. It would also enforce greater efforts at preventing emissions in new pipelines and at new wellheads.
The gas industry claims this is unnecessary, likening it to an ice cream seller being regulated to prevent dropping ice cream (which would clearly not be to the seller’s interest, anyway). However, any company makes financial decisions on a cost/benefit analysis. There are going to be emissions that they feel aren’t worth the added cost to retrieve them. This mandate would go some way to address that issue.
So, that’s all good.
However, the 40-45% reduction in emissions from the oil and gas sector from 2012 levels isn’t part of the mandate, it’s just an estimate of its effect. I don’t see how that number isn’t wildly inflated. 1) it doesn’t cover existing wells and pipelines, 2) natural gas extraction is expected to increase, 3) current studies have shown fugitive emissions are actually vastly underestimated, and 4) we aren’t exactly sure how/where those emissions are occurring.
But, let’s say it is accurate. A 45% reduction in methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, which is 30% of the total methane emissions in the U.S., from the total GG emissions in the United States (methane being 10% of the problem) addresses 1.35% percent of the GG problem in the United States alone. It’s something, yes. It’s not a lot.
Additionally, the mandate implies a sanctioning of increased natural gas extraction from U.S. sources. It provides a $15 million subsidy for increasing technological capabilities in reducing fugitive emissions, which is fine, but it’s still a subsidy to the natural gas industry.
Main sources:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/14/fact-sheet-administration-takes-steps-forward-climate-action-plan-anno-1
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/methane-emissions-rules-epa-114249.html
Also:
http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
Actually, “Obama Strikes Again” is an appropriate headline…but I don’t mean that in a positive way. This “great announcement” is so typical Obama. It’s designed to look like he’s going to do wonderful things real soon now, but it all amounts to smoke and mirrors, and it’s going to be business as usual. It’s what Obama has been doing since October, 2008, before he was even elected, when he led the Democrats into giving Wall Street massive bailouts that even the Republicans opposed.
He hasn’t changed since. While giving one great speech after another, he continually sells out his adoring supporters. But I give Obama credit for doing a good public relations job. Unlike Dubya who blatently appealed to the Bible-bashing dumb redneck constituency, Obama comes across as someone who can actually walk and chew gum at the same time. And the mainstream liberals cheer, while Obama persuades them to bend over and spread “just one more time” for Wall Street and the Cock Brothers, who are the people who really run America.
Whodathunkit. Peter Sinclair is out of step with his much more savvy and worldly readership.
I agree completely that Barack Obama is a fraud attempting to engage in happy talk to his naive partisan base.
I agree completely that Barack Obama was having a game of golf with oil & gas industries executives in the South as Bill McKibben and James Hansen were being arrested for chaining themselves to the White House fence as a climate protest.
What part of “Obama is a shill for Wall Street” does anyone here fail to understand?
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Obama’s pronouncements on closing Guantanamo Bay’s embarrassing torture gulag is another example of official Obama doublespeak. Now we’re supposed to believe it’s a good idea to close the torture prison because it is “too expensive per inmate”. What kind of a moral twerp is Obama?
As a non U.S citizen who has only visited the country for great vacations and great technical courses, and who has followed presidents from JFK to Obama, I can only comment that he seems the most likable and modern of the lot, so far … and hasn’t been involved in any sex scandal or “????gates” Some of the comments seem a little hard on the guy .. who the heck is better unless Peter wants to stand.
Too bad likeability means nothing when it comes to the deteriorating climate system. It’s precisely BECAUSE the drone striker in chief is so likeable (not to me personally, but apparently you and millions of others) that he’s seen as some kind of climate warrior by so many blinkered individuals. It’s really a sad commentary on the state of affairs when people point out that his measures are woefully inadequate, are in fact a smoke screen for corporations, and then your retort is that he’s the most likeable president. It’s like you’re actually saying you want to be manipulated by a charismatic while the climate unravels, and apparently a few people who thumbed up the comment are also on board, which I think is pretty representative of the general liberal populace. So congrats, you’ll be in good company with lots of likeable people when the crops start failing and climate migration intensifies. I wonder how likeable people taste?