A Little Drill & Fission, Part 2: Obama on Oil Drilling, Energy Efficiency at the Debate

by Emily Gertz

Published October 09, 2008 @ 07:56PM PT

More on energy from this week's debate between presidential candidates and senators Barack Obama and John McCain.  Click here for A Little Drill & Fission, Part 1.

Q/Brokaw, from Internet: Senator McCain, for you, we have our first question from the Internet tonight. A child of the Depression, 78-year-old Fiora (ph) from Chicago.

Since World War II, we have never been asked to sacrifice anything to help our country, except the blood of our heroic men and women. As president, what sacrifices -- sacrifices will you ask every American to make to help restore the American dream and to get out of the economic morass that we're now in?

Obama: ...I believe in the need for increased oil production. We're going to have to explore new ways to get more oil, and that includes offshore drilling. It includes telling the oil companies, that currently have 68 million acres that they're not using, that either you use them or you lose them.

[[Senator Obama here refers to tracts in the Gulf of Mexico that are already available for leasing and development. CNN Money reported back in June that it was 70 million acres, but the number of acres seems less important than how much oil might be recoverable from these areas: the Energy Information Agency estimates around 34 billion barrels, according to ClimateProgress.org's Joseph Romm. That's twice the amount of oil under areas that were included in the drilling moratorium. Some Congressional Democrats have accused oil companies of sitting on leases to these areas even as it pressures Congress to open the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling, reported CNN Money.

Senator Obama has softened his language on offshore drilling since earlier in the campaign, when, per NPR's Talk of the Nation, he said that opening up offshore drilling "would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years." In June, Senator Obama said he would cease to oppose offshore drilling if necessary to make progress on alternative energy proposals. In other words, he made a compromise to help bring about bipartisan support for a comprehensive energy plan.]]

Obama: We're going to have to develop clean coal technology and safe ways to store nuclear energy.

[[As New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin has noted on his Dot Earth Blog, it's less than clear what either the Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin campaigns mean when they refer to "clean coal," even though it's become one of the mantras of the election season. "If the question is about climate, as was the case in the Biden-Palin debate, one can only presume that the “clean” refers to capturing and storing carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping emission linked to recent warming," wrote Revkin. "But for now, while conventional pollutants from coal are being filtered or scrubbed rather cheaply, capturing CO2 at a scale that would be meaningful remains a pipe dream, a host of energy experts say."

According to Politifact, Obama's stated energy platform advocates nuclear power as one part of the domestic energy supply, but opposes the Yucca Mountain (Nevada) nuclear waste storage project.]]

But each and every one of us can start thinking about how can we save energy in our homes, in our buildings. And one of the things I want to do is make sure that we're providing incentives so that you can buy a fuel efficient car that's made right here in the United States of America, not in Japan or South Korea, making sure that you are able to weatherize your home or make your business more fuel efficient.

And that's going to require effort from each and every one of us.

[["This is all right as far as it goes. At least it raises the notions of weatherization and fuel efficiency," wrote Dave Roberts on Gristmill this week.  "I worry, though, that in context the main effect was to reinforce two terrible frames: First, that efficiency is a sacrifice, and second, that it's largely a matter of individual consumer choices. Nobody's telling the public that efficiency is the primary means of fighting climate change in the short-term -- more important than renewable energy sources, at least in the next decade or two. It should be the primary energy policy focus of the next administration."

I'd add that given the economic mess facing the next president -- two wars, legacy tax cuts, and the trillion-dollar bailout of the banking sector -- efficiency and conservation may be the only, if most cost-effective, measures that he will be able to promote during his first two years in office; however, it could be a good start to a larger climate re-stabilization plan.]]