The American Spectator : Environmentalist-in-Chief

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Environmentalist-in-Chief

By William Tucker on 1.30.12 @ 6:09AM

At the rate he's going, our president will soon be taking credit for the discovery of natural gas.

In Ancient China, the Emperor went out every spring and walked the fields to bless the harvest and encourage the crops to grow. Sure enough, when the peasants put the seeds in the ground, the crops appeared and the Emperor took credit.

The job of President of the United States is often much the same. According to the legend embraced by some, he is responsible for just about everything good that happens in the country. If a group of wildcatting oil geologists in North Dakota, for instance, use 3-D seismographic to discover a whole new strata of shale oil, and if "fracking" techniques developed in Texas should make these deposits accessible for the first time in history -- well then, it must be the President who made it all happen.

This was the mantle, at least, that President Barack Obama was willing to assume last week when he declared in his State of the Union address:

Over the last three years, we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I'm directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now -- right now -- American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years. That's right -- eight years. Not only that -- last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years.

Now those with long memories might be wondering at this point from whence this new enthusiasm for fossil fuels. They might remember the President's Inaugural Address three years ago when he proclaimed:

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.

They remember that the words "oil" or "gas" or "fossil fuels" were never mentioned on that January afternoon.

Then there was the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill after which the President suspended all new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and then after the ban was lifted made it so difficult to secure new permits that most drilling rigs have long left the Gulf for Brazil, the coast of Africa, and other more hospitable places around the globe.

Most curious of all, however, is the President's claim to have opened up "millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration," implying that this is why "American oil production is the highest it has been in eight years" so that "we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years." As more than one wag suggested, once you've run an economy into the ground with 9 percent unemployment, you're bound to get a little decreased oil consumption.

The Institute for Energy Research is one of those Washington think tanks that runs around trying to keep track of such proclamations. Before the newspapers were on the stands the next day, IER had put out a report casting a little light on the President's claims. One of its graphs shows the number of permits for oil and gas exploration issued by the Bureau of Land Management. As IER notes, the Obama Administration has auctioned off less than half the number of leases annually as the Clinton Administration.

Then there were graphs illustrating the production of oil and gas on federal lands as opposed to private and state lands: As the numbers show, the obvious trend has been reduced production on federal lands and increased production from the private and state sector:

Now this is not necessarily a bad thing. When Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot conceived the Conservation Movement, they cast the federal government in the role of an aristocratic landholder who is not troubled by an immediate need for money but is able to hold resources off the market in anticipation that they will later become more valuable. This speculative venture is the way the market conserves resources. It is not the government alone that follows this practice. Last week Chesapeake Energy, the nation's second largest developer of natural gas, announced it will drill no more wells in the Marcellus Shale for the time being because the price of gas has dropped so low. It will save the resources for another day. President Obama is doing the same thing with federal resources. He can certainly take credit as the nation's Chief Conserver. But Oil-and-Gas-Developer-in-Chief? Best save that for the wildcatters out in the Marcellus and the Bakken.

Most curious of all was the President's claim that if there has been a boom in natural gas production over the past decade, government research was responsible:

The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don't have to choose between our environment and our economy. And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock -- reminding us that Government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.

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About the Author

William Tucker is the author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment

jothepro| 1.30.12 @ 6:30AM

What do you think Jackwi? Your slipping baby.

Jack in Wi.| 1.30.12 @ 7:04AM

I am not and never have been that desperate to be no 1 here. Hussan must set his alarm. Frankly I am surprised that someone from the Eastern time zone isn't here early everyday. I was in Rio last Feb. They are drilling a mile off Coca Cobana Beach. Obama is helping finance that, but refuses to let most new deep water drilling here, go ahead. Well the people like to drive cars but are afraid if someone ever drills or mines near their house. Here in Wi. we are sitting on many large mineral deposits that would provide thousands of jobs. Yet the liberals here make it very difficult to ever start another large mining project here. That is despite the fact that Wi, is home to 2 of the largest mining machine companies in the world.

Mac Jehoff| 1.30.12 @ 8:54AM

Cheese is not a mineral deposit.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 1.30.12 @ 6:39AM

Obama is a liar of the first order. When he talks his nose doesn't get bigger, his ears do.

c. j. acworth| 1.30.12 @ 7:23AM

Of course Obama is a liar. The question is, can the Republicans put forward an alternative who has enough fire in his belly to put the case to America in a credible, non-flip-flopping way? I try to remain optimistic, but it's getting harder every day. I really fear for the future of this country.

Teaghan| 1.30.12 @ 8:58AM

Ditto, CJ

VonMisesJr| 1.30.12 @ 7:50AM

"Utopians" believe in "masterminds" that direct all activities, and they reject individualism. So as Mark Levin points out in his book "Ameritopia," all advances must be the product of "supermen" such as Barack, Michelle and Sir Hillary.
Fortunately, only about twenty-percent of Americans describe themselves as "Utopians," I mean "liberals." Then you have the stupid people and those not paying attention.
But when you're broke and don't have a job, even the stupid and indifferent figure out they must pay a little more attention. So the stupid and uninformed are joining the ranks of "conservatives" that knew from the start that our "supermen" are actually more like sub-human in wisdom. Now they are even challenging the bogus claims of the government and MSM.
Not to the stupid and uninformed: We love you and welcome you to the conservative ranks. Tune into conservative media with an open mind. It is not rocket science, but more like common sense.

Pecos Pete| 1.30.12 @ 8:38AM

VMJ: Common Sense = Conservative Principles. You are spot on.

cowgirl| 1.30.12 @ 9:13AM

Unfortunately, you can't fix stupid.

Timothy L. Pennell| 1.30.12 @ 9:57AM

He is a Great Conservationist. Madmen always are.

A great man once said that: "The Environmental Movement is where the Communists went, when the Wall Came down". Hence the term: Watermelon. Green on the Outside. Red on the inside.

What? you don't like the Watermelon reference being applied to your Boy - Barack?

How about we call him a "Newspaper"?

As in: "What's Black and White, and RED all over?"

Al Adab| 1.30.12 @ 10:26AM

There is a great distinction, which we need to recognize, between Conservation and Environmentalism. We allow the Gaia worshiping idolaters to define their "movement" when we need to point out the difference. It is one thing to manage resources as Conservationists seek to do and quite another to prevent rational uses of our resources as Environmentalists wish.

They have little regard for the standard of living we have created and all too much regard for idyllic, third word, "noble savage" theories. The intent is to create an America that uses less, lives poorer and equalizes the suffering certain to follow.

The next President needs to direct the DOD and Navy Dept., by executive order, to build 6 new nuclear power plants and 6 new oil refineries as necessary for national defense. That would be a good start toward the "energy independance" we ostensibly seek.

Timothy L. Pennell| 1.30.12 @ 11:17AM

I've got news for ya, pal. He don't give a Rat's Ass about ANYTHING, but Himself. He'd Blow it all up. TOMORROW, if he thought it would help HIM.

He's not an Environmentalist. He's not a Conservationist.

He's a NIHILIST!

And the sooner people get their minds around that fact, the better.

Al Adab| 1.30.12 @ 11:59AM

Sadly Tim I think you are likely right. Sort of "to save the earth, we destroy America" kind of thing.

Keep making your position clear and perhaps voters will begin to understand that the two partys are no longer viable alternatives one to the other, but represent vastly different world views and priorities. One still hold Liberty dear while the other offers us pottage for our birthright.

VonMisesJr| 1.30.12 @ 11:34AM

Al Adab (may I call you AA),
The "Noble Savage" concept did not promote the idea of returning to the jungle. It was Rousseau's "Utopian" theory that man in nature was noble, and civilization corrupted him. So we need guys like him, Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama to form us with enlightened guidance.
So your solution is top-down centrally planned dictates? Why not 3 and 9, or 8 and 4, or perhaps we double down with an even dozen each?

Al Adab| 1.30.12 @ 11:56AM

AA or Al is fine. I certainly appreciate your moniker. Great economist. Too bad the DEM party doesn't read him, but that is why they are statists.

As to my "top down" approach, it is one way to get the ball rolling and make up for lost time; get us back ahead of the curve. The actual number can be debated against need, but fast action is required.

Correct about Noble Savage, but that is the wolkenkuckkucksheim they live in and to which they wish us to return (as if it ever existed).

VonMisesJr| 1.30.12 @ 3:15PM

They wouldn't understand Von Mises on purpose.

I just think Von Mises would have lectured that the sooner the government gets out of the way, the better. The danger is overcompensating by giving the tyranny to the GOP without a mandate for reducing central planning.

SUBVET| 1.30.12 @ 12:09PM

Adolph Hitler....."What luck for rulers that men do not think".

POST American| 1.30.12 @ 8:36AM

---Speaking of 'enviornmentalism'
(ie the elite's EUGENICS cover op)

---and putting down such grisly recent
items as the FACT that now 16% of the
mercury in British air is coming form the
dental work of burning corpses ----even
as the powers that be --REFUSE-- to consider
ANY project to construct catacombs
(--very easy with today's boring tech BTW)

----and putting aside the now ON RECORD
FACT that GMO food, which is saturating our
food chain, is not only a cause of organ
failue, cancer and obesity ------BUT, is
an intergenerational sterilant

--------and forgetting, for a moment the
Alzheimer's link to all those Auminum and
Cadmium CHEM-trials choking the skies

---------------likewise with that pesky cesium
fallout from FUKISHIMA which doesn't exist

--------------------AND that aggressive UN
mandate for those hideous, mercury filled
RED Chinese manufactued light bulbs----

WE NOW LEARN that, according to the
UN plan ---by 2020 it will be ILLEGAL to
make, and probably even to own wooden
furniture.

EVERYTHING'S to be made of bisphenol A
rich plastics to 'save' the forests.

We NEVER hear John Bolton these days
making so much as a peep about the private,
unelected, elite, USURY-EUGENICS borg
UN ---even now, during the very height of
its implementations and power grabs.

------------------HMMMMMMMM------------------

"Once their world government plan is
in place ---there will be NO turning back
----NO soveriegn nations left to fight back
as they did in WWII ---or against the
RED Chinese in KOREA. ----There won't
even be so much as a complaints department
in their FINAL 'you-topia' ---NONE."

-----------------YOU WERE WARNED---------------

Dick Nome| 1.30.12 @ 9:12AM

The full moon is 8 days away. You folks are warned.

Jordan| 1.30.12 @ 8:52AM

We have plenty of oil and enough natural gas to get us through the next decades (centuries if shale works out and is economical) but what I'm more worried about in terms of natural resources is iron ore.

I'd have no problem with the Federal government doling out some grants to fund research into more efficient steel manufacturing and mineral exploration. New Zealand has "iron sands" on its upper island that apparently came from volcanic rocks so I wonder if we have enough of this sand on the Aleutian Islands in Alaska or along the West Coast to make a go at potentially revitalizing our iron and steel industry.

Moe Blotz| 1.30.12 @ 9:04AM

The old blast furnace and open hearth steel makers folded because US Steel, Bethlehem, Republic, J&L, among others did not keep their plants current by converting to basic oxygen or electric arc production. EPA did a number on our steel producers with their myriad clean air mandates. Runaway union labour contracts did not help, and those union members felt entitled to help themselves to whatever they could carry out of the mills. We have a few basic steel producers still operating, but we may never see anything on the scale of the belching smokestacks and coke ovens from the twentieth century.

cicero| 1.30.12 @ 9:00AM

As I recall, the whole enviro movement started with a woman named Rachel Carson, who wrote the book, "Silent Spring". As my children were indoctrinated with the movement through the schools, too, I finally read the tome. The main story seemed to center on the dropping of pelletized DDT on Detroit in the 1950's, killing all of the robins. Since I grew up in Detroit in the 1950's, I searched my memory trying to recall the place littered with dead robins. Since I could remember no such thing, I tried to reason back to what she was talking about. Using my gardening knowledge, it occurred to me that if you drop pelletized DDT on the ground, and wait for a rain, it will disolve, and leach into the earth, probably killing any earthworm that happened to be in the vicinity. Guess what rabins eat. Earthworms. The redbreasted, feathered wormhunters probably flew to Toledo for lunch.
As for oil, as I recall it, the whole hysteria started in the late 1960's, when California started coughing over the smog that rolled in off the Pacific every morning, and was stopped by the Rockies. That problem was pretty much solved with the catalytic converter, and smokestack scrubbers.. We were then told that we were running out of oil, so we had to consserve, or find alternative sources of energy. That problem was solved when we figured out that we were sitting on about 300 years of carbon based energy reserves.
On to global cooling,...warming,...climate change,...... And now we have the savior of the world giving us the answer to all of our problems every time he ascends the podium, and holds forth with his words of wisdom. All of the problems are being solved by the all knowing, all seeing, all doing Oz.... excuse me, Federal Government.

Dick Nome| 1.30.12 @ 9:17AM

They still have smog in S. Cal. Seems it isn't related so much to emissions after all. Oil is not bio-genic. It percolated up from the hot oil prodiucing pressure cooker deep in the mantle and below. We are not running out of oil as long as Gia keeps making it.

Lee Ghume| 1.30.12 @ 9:33AM

The indigenous people of Ellay called the basin the valley of the smokes before the caucasian invaders arrived.

Tom Bullock| 1.30.12 @ 9:24AM

Well said. Rachel Carson's conclusions in her book have been proven wrong on a number of occasions, however, the global ban on DDT continues resulting in thousands of deaths from Malaria in third world countries.

Al Adab| 1.30.12 @ 10:34AM

Indeed Tom, but all those third world peoples are "living (and dying) naturally" and "closer to nature" just like the Gaia worshiping Environmentalists want us to.

William Tucker| 1.30.12 @ 11:28AM

Not thouands, millions.

Ian Strachan| 1.30.12 @ 9:46AM

Oy cicero, you refer to the modern environmental movement, eh? Scotland's James Croll had theories about the changes in climate due to the oddities of Earth's orbit around the Sun and the planet's rotation. Mr.Croll's theories were published mid to late 19th century and scientists largely disagreed with him, but current analysis of sedimentary layers from Stornaway to Murdo have indicated he was correct. Milutin Milankovich studied the climate cycles as well and went further with his theories, giving us the Milankovich Cycles that aid our modern understanding of ice ages versus warming trends.

Moe Blotz| 1.30.12 @ 9:12AM

Robins flying to Toledo must have been going to Tony Packo's to fight over french fries with the sea gulls.

hunter| 1.30.12 @ 9:15AM

This year has revealed two outstanding inviduals in the following catagories: 1.Biggest & Best Liar, 2. Biggest self-illusionest, egocentric manic. The winners were 1. Casey Anthony, 2. Charlie Sheen. The second runner up in each cat. is Barrok obama, whom would have won this year, but beings he won the past three years the committee felt it would be good to look at others as well.

George S| 1.30.12 @ 11:21AM

This is nothing more than preemption. The price of gasoline has almost doubled since February 2009 (when Obama came on duty). Something has to explain it.. or better yet something has to explain how much higher the gas prices would have been had Obama not acted. Hence, the reason for taking credit.

oldfart| 1.30.12 @ 3:27PM

Obama and Jessie Jackson have much in common. They both try to find the front of the parade and at the last minute, get in front, and thereby take credit for the whole thing.

Bob K.| 1.30.12 @ 8:43PM

Right there in the 12th Paragraph just below the Charts is says that Chesapeake Energy, the 2nd largest developer of natural gas has suspended drilling in the Marcellus Shale beds because the price of gas is too low!

So much for low priced energy!

It hasn't helped the local economy much either.

There are over 4000 wells in Pennsylvania's Northern Tier Marcellus Shale region. It is still a Rural Slum. Used to be good for hunting camps; not so much now. Real Estate hasn't boomed. No one wants to buy rural property where the mineral rights are owned by other people.

POST American| 1.30.12 @ 10:05PM

----------------------FINAL WORD----------------------

"Enviornmentalism' is the EEL-eat's cover
for power grabs and awesome EUGENICS.

Actuarial psychopaths 'helping' the
enviornment ----

"Among the American Indians,
the very act of counting was reckoned
a sadistic act."
D H Lawrence
(1922)

-----------------------Indians KNEW. . .

Marc Jeric| 1.31.12 @ 3:07PM

What is worse than a revolutionary communist? Answer: a marxist Muslim from Kenya.
What is threatening the environment most? Answer : "green energy" pushers.

POST American| 1.31.12 @ 11:33PM

---------------BOTTOMLESS LINE---------------------

"AND as yet more doubts about
Obama's parternity emerge, and MORE
questions about the CIA-Globalist linked
Ann Dunham -----AGAIN------ we're almost
ready to bet there will be a day when
we're let in on the TRUTH ----he was a
clone of KEY RED China sellout artist
-----------AVERELL HARRIMAN-------------"

WHO better to unfold Globalist EUGENICS
during the FINAL phase of handover and
--------------------TREASON--------------------.

ENJOY the Super Bowl----------------!

------------Wampum 'n credit n' 'stare-oids'

--------------------------Just keep on truckin'!

Alex Trembath| 3.13.12 @ 2:06PM

Thanks for your post William. The Breakthrough Institute has compiled a summary of all writings and research into the history of US federal government investment in shale gas. In the post, we respond to some of the criticisms leveled in your analysis. Follow the link for the full summary: http://thebreakthrough.org/blo....._and.shtml

Notably, claims that fracking has been in use since the 1940s are an accurate but misleading reaction to our investigation. Hydraulic fracturing was used in the 1940s in limestone deposits, not shale deposits, the latter of which are much more technically difficult to drill commercially. Before efforts initiated by the federal government and contributed to by gas companies like Mitchell Energy, operators would drill through shale to get to limestone, unable to tap the vast quantities of gas in shale.

Gas industry officials like Dan Steward, former Vice President of Mitchell Energy, emphasized in interviews the importance of government involvement in shale gas research. George Mitchell himself regularly lobbied for DOE fossil energy research spending during the 1980s when Congress repeatedly attempted to zero out DOE research budgets.

If government investment in shale was displacing private investment, that would be news to the dozens of gas company partners that collaborated in early pilot testing and demonstration projects and worked with Congress to establish the Gas Research Institute, which would apply with FERC for research proposals using the revenues from a federally approved surcharge on natural gas. Mitchell Energy worked with the federal government for subsidization of their first horizontal drill in 1991, 5 years after a joint DOE-private venture successfully completed the very first multi-fracture horizontal well.

This is to say nothing of the 20-year tax credit for unconventional gas, or the application of microseismic imaging, an innovation sourced from Sandia National Labs that was originally unassociated with shale research and proved absolutely essential to drilling operations.

The history is clear that in many cases of technological development, private gas companies were eager partners with federal R&D and demonstration efforts.