Obama's Continued Failures on the Environment and Jobs

Spineless.

Here's a fascinating look at President Obama's energy policy from a former fan, Robert Redford, The Sundance Kid:

One reason I supported President Obama is because he said we must protect clean air, water and lands. But what good is it to say the right thing unless you act on it?
Since early August, three administration decisions -- on Arctic drilling, the Keystone XL pipeline and the ozone that causes smog -- have all favored dirty industry over public health and a clean environment. Like so many others, I'm beginning to wonder just where the man stands.

For months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been poised to issue new ozone rules to reduce the smog that causes asthma attacks and other respiratory ills. We badly need these new standards, which the EPA estimates could prevent 12,000 premature deaths a year.

On Friday, though, the White House put the new rules on ice. The result: these vital protections will be delayed until at least 2013 - conveniently after next year's presidential election.

The week before, the State Department gave a preliminary green light to the proposed Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas refineries.

If this pipeline wins final approval from the administration in the coming months, it will wed our energy future to the dirtiest oil on the planet. It will invest this country in one of the most destructive mining practices ever devised. And it will put farmers, ranchers and cropland at risk across the great plains of the American heartland. That's why the Republican governor of Nebraska came out against it this week.

And just last month, the Interior Department gave conditional approval to Shell Oil's plan to begin drilling four exploratory wells in the Arctic waters off of Alaska's North Slope as early as next summer. Congress has yet to pass a single law strengthening offshore drilling safeguards in the wake of last year's BP blowout, and we're giving Shell the go-ahead to drill in some of the nation's most fertile fishing grounds, in waters that are iced in eight months each year and in a location a five-day journey by ship from the nearest Coast Guard station.

What's going on here?...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-redford/...

Nauseous wrote:

Spineless.

You didn't have to admit it, it's quite evident.

President Obama is definetly not trying to change from a policy of economic globalization, to promote American Manufacturing jobs as is evident by:

The following report for Congress in DEC 2009 that explains that national ballast water legislation would do the same thing as tariffs, plus protect our environment from the carbon footprint and dirty water trail of foreign ships bringing foreign manufactured imports into our country, stealing jobs from Americans.“Although estimates of the costs of ballast treatment may be imprecise and vary from vessel to

vessel, there is some general agreement on average costs.14 For example, it may cost an estimated $400,000 per vessel for modification of container/bulk vessels to use onshore ballast water treatment facilities at California ports. More generally, the cost of retrofitting vessels to treat

ballast water has been estimated at between $200,000 and $310,000 per vessel for mechanical

treatment and around $300,000 for chemical treatment.15 Most of this expense will be borne by

foreign shipping companies, as the U.S. flag fleet is a small percentage of the global fleet,16 and

likely passed along to consumers of products imported on these ships.” Cost and the ability to ship product are what determine where manufacturing companies invest. Currently all we have from this administration is a Military plan subject to the next commander and chiefs direction, giving incentives to foreign ships bring foreign manufactured goods into our country to install technology to protect our environment. This is while Americans are out of work, forcing the states, without an infrastructure for enforcement into expensive legislative competition with each other while dealing with an international organization of primarily foreign economic interest.(IMO) Sadly after the historic vote by the House in 2008,(passed 395-7), was killed by one Senator Boxer over her belief in state rights, overriding all Americans rights to control the amount of pathogens and virus dumped in US waters, this administration has again promoted the grandiose plan of economic globalization over economic Americanization as a way to create jobs.

new legislation to check out for ballast water
H.R.2840