By Leah Bamberger,
Climate Fellow
Clean Air – Cool Planet
Leah Bamberger did her undergraduate studies in political science and environmental studies at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC and is now at UMass Amherst pursing a master’s degree in regional planning, where her primary research area of interest is planning for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Oil spill or not, we need comprehensive climate legislation!
After addressing the nation from the Oval Office last week, President Obama was criticized for exploiting the crisis in the Gulf in order to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said Obama “is trying to exploit this disaster to pass his national energy tax.” The word exploit carries a very negative connotation. Is he really that evil? Let’s first explore the definition of the word exploit. Merriam-Webster gives two definitions for the verb.
Definition one: “to make productive use of: utilize.” Okay, that’s not so bad. Growing up, I was told this was called learning from ones mistakes. In his speech, the President acknowledged that “we need better regulations, better safety standards, and better enforcement when it comes to offshore drilling.” Furthermore, he pointed out that “oil is a finite resource” and “the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean (is) because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.” I guess “drill, baby, drill” has some pretty devastating consequences. We need clean energy. We need green jobs and clean industry. We need the savings from energy efficiency improvements. We need comprehensive climate and energy legislation and we need it now.
Definition two: “to make use of meanly or unfairly for one’s own advantage.” Bringing climate and energy legislation back to the Senate floor is in no way advantageous to the President. Democrats no longer have a super majority in the Senate, and even if they did, they can’t come to an agreement on what the bill should look like. A climate and energy bill could prove to be just as much as a political death sentence as the healthcare bill was. Furthermore, only a few months ago President Obama was opening more of our waters to offshore drilling. It does not seem that climate and energy legislation was on his agenda prior to the spill.
So it appears to be true; the President is exploiting this disaster (according to definition one at least). He is utilizing it as a learning opportunity. He’s not profiting from it, he won’t experience personal gain and no one will suffer as a result. He is merely asking Congress to come up with a bipartisan solution to wean this country off fossil fuels and prevent disasters like the one in the Gulf from ever happening again. He has been reminded, along with the rest of the nation that more oil means more problems.
Cool Planet 