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Column
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Oil spill - Is Obama going Bush’s way?
The American President seems intent on squandering his environmental 9/11
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 Thomas Friedman
Economist and NYT Columnist
President Barack Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill has been disappointing.
I say that not because I endorse the dishonest conservative critique that the Gulf oil spill is somehow Obama’s Katrina and that he is displaying the same kind of incompetence that George W. Bush did after that hurricane. To the contrary, Obama’s team has done a good job coordinating the cleanup so far. The President has been on top of it from the start.
The Gulf oil spill is Obama’s 9/11 – and it is disappointing to see him making the same mistake George W. Bush made with his 9/11. It was one of those rare seismic events that creates the possibility to energise the country to do something really important and lasting that is too hard to do in normal times.
President Bush’s greatest failure was not Iraq, Afghanistan or Katrina. It was his failure of imagination after 9/11 to mobilise the country to get behind a really big initiative for nation-building in America. I suggested a $1-a-gallon “Patriot Tax” on gasoline that could have simultaneously reduced our deficit, funded basic science research, diminished our dependence on oil imported from the very countries whose citizens carried out 9/11, strengthened the dollar, stimulated energy efficiency and renewable power and slowed climate change. It was the Texas oilman’s Nixon-to-China moment – and Bush blew it.
Had we done that on the morning of 9/12 – when gasoline averaged $1.66 a gallon – the majority of Americans would have signed on. They wanted to do something to strengthen the country they love. Instead, Bush told a few of us to go to war and the rest of us to go shopping. So today, gasoline costs twice as much at the pump, with most of that increase going to countries hostile to our values, while China is rapidly becoming the world’s leader in wind, solar, electric cars and high-speed rail. Heck of a job.
Sadly, President Obama seems intent on squandering his environmental 9/11 with a Bush-level failure of imagination. So far, the Obama policy is: “Think small and carry a big stick.” He is hammering the oil company executives. But he is offering no big strategy to end our oil addiction. Sen. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman have unveiled their new energy bill, which the president has endorsed but only in a very tepid way.
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Because Kerry-Lieberman embraces vitally important fees on carbon emissions that the White House is afraid will be exploited by Republicans in the midterm elections. The GOP, they fear, will scream carbon “tax” at every Democrat who would support this bill, and Obama, having already asked Democrats to make a hard vote on health care, feels he can’t ask them for another.
I don’t buy it. In the wake of this historic oil spill, the right policy – a bill to help end our addiction to oil – is also the right politics. The people are ahead of their politicians. So is the US military. There are many conservatives who would embrace a carbon tax or gasoline tax if it was offset by a cut in payroll taxes or corporate taxes, so we could foster new jobs and clean air at the same time. If Republicans label Democrats “gas taxers” then Democrats should label them “Conservatives for OPEC” or “Friends of BP.” Shill, baby, shill.
Why is Obama playing defence? Just how much oil has to spill into the Gulf, how much wildlife has to die, how many radical mosques need to be built with our gasoline purchases to produce more Times Square bombers, before it becomes politically “safe” for the president to say he is going to end our oil addiction? Indeed, where is the “Obama End to Oil Addiction Act”? Why does everything have to emerge from the House and Senate? What does he want? What is his vision? What are his redlines? All I know is that without a fixed, long-term price on carbon, none of the President’s important investments in clean power research and development will ever scale.
Obama has assembled a great team that could help him make his case – John Holdren, science adviser; Carol Browner, energy adviser; Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner; and Lisa Jackson, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency. But they have been badly underutilised by the White House. Obama is not just our super-disaster-coordinator. “He is our leader,” noted Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics. “And being a leader means telling the rest of us what’s our job, what do we need to do to make this a transformative moment.” Please don’t tell us that our role is just to hate BP or shop in Mississippi or wait for a commission to investigate. We know the problem, and Americans are ready to be enlisted for a solution. Of course we can’t eliminate oil exploration or dependence overnight, but can we finally start? President, your advisers are wrong: Americans are craving your leadership on this issue. Are you going to channel their goodwill into something that strengthens our country – “The Obama End to Oil Addiction Act” – or are you going squander your 9/11, too?
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Comments
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jaideep chatterjee From DURGAPORE--
6/3/2010 1
Thomas,
WE ALL KNOWN OF THE FACTS THAT THIS OIL DISPUTES HAVE GAVE BIRTH OF ISRAELIES,HAD MAKE A PROMINENT ACUISITION OVER SUEZ AND MADE THE ENTIRE ARABIANS AGAINST THE CHRISTINITY!!
PRESIDENT HAD NO OPTION BUT TO BE CARRIED WHAT HAD BEEN BE HIS ANCESTORS WITH OUT FURTHER COMPROMISATION FOR THE SAKE OF THIER DIGNIFIED POPULATION
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