In his election campaign, Obama said he was concerned about global warming. In office, he has shown a deep commitment to fossil fuels
President Obama’s State of the Union speech Jan. 25 contained distressing news for opponents of global warming who recognize the need to begin substantially reducing reliance upon carbon based fossil fuels.
“Over the last three years,” Obama said, “we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration. And tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75% of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.”
The next day, CNN reported, Washington announced “plans to sell off oil and gas leases on 38 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico seafloor in a new domestic energy push.”
The extraction of natural gas in the enormous volume sought by the Obama Administration depends primarily on a vast nationwide increase in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract this energy resource from shale rock. Fracking is the process of pumping chemicals at high pressure into the ground to crack the rock and release the gas within.
Obama announced that with the relatively recent development of fracking technology the country now “has a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years” — and he made it clear every drop of that resource should be exploited.
Climate and Capitalism
by Donna Goodman
No comments:
Post a Comment