 | POLL: Oil Breaks $127, Now What? | The Oil Drum | Has Peak Oil--As a Meme--"Tipped"? (Out of Futures Backwardation and into Contango) |  |
98 comments on A quote from Obama in Oregon..."We can't eat as much as we want...and then expect other countries...to say OK"
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
98 comments on A quote from Obama in Oregon..."We can't eat as much as we want...and then expect other countries...to say OK"
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Friday 27th November 2009
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
I did see an article the other day about the Democrats, if they can get 'unified' government and get beyond a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (the latter is a big if, and the former I would put at a close to 50-50 probability were the election actually held today--but we have another six months to go! Yay!), would put on a real gas tax. I personally doubt that these kinds of plans are politically feasible, even in this political environment/frame of "change," but hey, I have been (and hope that I am this time) wrong before.
By the way, we are going to try to focus on both presidential candidates' agendas/stances/issues with regard to energy and sustainability (writ large) to compare them as the campaign progresses--so when folks see on-point discussions/commentary/ideas/speeches from both candidates, please send them along to the eds box.
Even if I am a political geek, I can't catch them all.
I agree with the Obama quote. However I also believe that it is political suicide for him to say that out loud.
Kyle
He was talking to an Orgeon audience which seems to be a far more envirnmentally aware state than some others. I don't think it is political suicide, I think it's actaully smart politics. There are probably a lot of Americans who are tired of politicians who talk to them like pre-schoolers and would welcome a president that is prepared to tell it like it is. I think he has a strong chance of being that guy. The primaries will come to represent the great struggle that Obama had to win over vested interest, old style popularism and the baby boomer narcissism that characterised and embodied the cancer that exists in American society today.
More power to him.
He's black, he's inexperienced, his middle name is Hussein, his pastor is a nutcase...
All true.
But the USA and the world need a fresh start and Obama is the only one who really wants to turn the page.
Even we people that do not live in the USA are watching the election process and hoping Obama would be the winner.
He's half African-American and half Caucasion and you forgot one thing...he's part Irish. Does any of this matter? No, he's a mutt with a diverse background. All the more to understand the diversity of people in this country. The man has the grassroots support of this country right now besides those still hanging onto Ron Paul.
Actually he's not one-half African-American. His father was Kenyan and his mom was a white person from Kansas.
I guess that qualifies him to be a full African-American as opposed to a black American-American.
Hi race is not important. His intellect and personality are.
His pastor may be a nutcase, but I'll bet that pastor knows more about the Tuskegee experiment than you!
"There are probably a lot of Americans who are tired of politicians who talk to them like pre-schoolers and would welcome a president that is prepared to tell it like it is."
You think Americans want to be told what kind of cars they can drive, how much food they can eat, what temperature they can keep their thermostats, what kind of lightbulbs they can use, how much water they can use in their toilets, etc, etc, etc?
You really think that's what people are looking for?
No, THAT is the DEFINITION of being treated like a pre-schooler. Treating people as being too dumb and ignorant to know what's good for them and letting the government run their lives instead.
Do you need to be told how to wipe your ass too?
Of course not, and that's not what anyone's suggesting. Telling someone what you think they should do is not the same as forcing them to do it at gunpoint. But, I, for one, would love to have a president say, "If you keep building cities in the desert you are going to run out of water, and there is nothing that we can do about it."
--
JimFive
How about "If you keep building cities below sea level you are going to get flooded, and there is nothing that we can do about it."...?
(Hint, hint: Katrina... I expect to see a reply post by Al from Big Easy)
I think it's all about sustainability... Is what we are doing sustainable? Building cities under sea level? Building cities in the desert (Before we look toward the east, think Las Vegas...)? Driving SUV's? Eating 2000 calorie meals at
McMansionMcDonalds that are brought to us via a 2000 mile long supply chain so we can sit on our fat butt and go through the drive thru to a job that's 30 miles from where we live? Is this sustainable...? And about our 2000 square foot McMansion- complete with A/C, 3 car garage and a lot that is not even remotely big enough to sustain a family of 4 if it needed to be gardened WTSHTF- Is that sustainable?Or is it POPULAR?
No thats telling them what to do not telling it like it is. If you are the captain of the Titanic do you deliberatley withold the fact that the ship is sinking to give people a choice to continue partying? Or do you say "Look folks, we have a serious problem here, we have a short time to fix it and here is what I suggest we do."
With politicians now it doesn't matter so much what they say, its how it's sliced and diced into soundbites. An articulate explanation of anything will be butchered to a five-second snip. To quote Bill Moyers the other day, "Beware the terrible simplifiers!".
Still, he's basically saying the the US way of life is out of its own hands or indeed "negotiable", the complete opposite of what Cheney said. It's refreshing, but Obama simply remains the lesser of two (or three) evils. I doubt an Obama administration would do anything radically different on the energy issue.
He's a lot closer than anyone else to doing something about the energy issue if he's willing to stick his neck dangerously out, while the other candidates keep their necks tucked safely in...
Full quote:
"Pitching his message to Oregon's environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to "lead by example" on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.
"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added."
Goose took it a little out of context...
Obama wants to produce cutting edge technologies at home that benefit both the US and the rest of the world. It seems he understands the responsible thing to do is tighten our belts in the interim.
In my opinion, he's saying things that need to be said. All the while, the other candidates are playing political patty cakes...
Clinton will say or do anything to be elected and therefore stands for very little. McCain is being branded as an indie but if you look at his voting record he's all-pro smokestack industry.
I know it's been said before that no candidate could help our situation vis a vis peak oil. I disagree. I think Obama is by far the best choice in the context of energy.
Robert, I just saw that you pulled the full quote. Must have posted while I was writing my response. Sorry for the repeat.
No worries! The more the merrier ;)
Thing is, when you crunch the figures and look at the likely peak date and decline rate - Obama needs to be managing a 1-2Mbpd reduction in US demand every year for the next 5 years to be in OK shape. Its not tightening belts, its crash diet.
I see nothing which recognises that so far, so instead he's going to be managing riots, economic collapse and disintegration.
Your extrapolation, all things being equal, predicts a 4-8 million barrel per day shortfall year on year, for the next five. Even at only 4 million barrels per day, you're looking at 65 mbpd total production by 2013 or about 21 mbpd total world exports?
Now that is, indeed a hard crash scenario. I could be wrong, but I think we'll likely fight this thing a little better than that.
In any case, as hard or soft as the crash may be, better to have someone who's willing to put in measures to soften the blow, than to have someone who's going to whistle as the whole system starts to shake itself to shambles.
I also think Obama is your best bet but I think the problems he is going to face are to great. We are sitting on the peak now and any initiative he comes up with will never be implimented in time or be scaled up enouugh to stop the worst of what will happen.
Better to do something than to do nothing. Better to get as many people to the lifeboats as possible. Better to run the pumps as long and as fast as we can. The better we manage this thing, the less people will be harmed for it. Good leadership now is about mitigation -- reducing impact to the lowest level possible.
Right now we don't really know how rapidly the situation will evolve or how effective our response will be. But if we fail to respond, then, for a certainty, things will be much, much, worse.
What a bold move! Obama comes out in favor of...wait for it... developing new technologies! And the liberals all go nuts with excitement.
Wait a second... hasn't Bush been attacked nonstop as a do-nothing all these years by saying we should develop new technologies as the answer to our problems?
Whoa!
Kudos to Obama. The Only polititian, who eats fifth of what he wants, lives in house at 30degrees and drives bicycle.
I encourage Obama to switch off all heating, stay at home and eat nothing at all until the end of elections. Such a wisdom will impress even Republicans.
This is a standard propaganda technique; exaggerate the goals to create a strawman and then attack the strawman. I can understand a Republican's desire for Obama to stay home, but such a request is silly and lowers the perceived veracity of the poster.
Bush (2002): "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption".
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020923-2.html
Cygnus -- Petrus.
Better yet, how about you guys go live in the woods with the animals. Obviously, since you think technology is worthless, might as well just quit it altogether? Heck, why post on the internet? It obviously can't solve the problem of communication over vast distances. And since you believe solar, wind, renewables, and nuclear technology can't help deal with the energy problem you could at least cut your consumption by the approx 25% they represent and then consign yourself to the decline curve in fossil fuels as well -- since to you that represents the only valid form of energy ever produced.
Re-read my post. Where did I ever say technology is worthless? I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of those who laud Obama for saying we need new technologies, but attack others for saying the same thing as being part of the "unrealistic," "technology will save us" camp.
It's either his Sister Soulja moment, or he can really relate to Jimmy Carters cardigan' which in this country is political suicide. My guess is he's way too smart for that and he is tapping into what even the unevolved senses -- that we are in deep doo doo.