"President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,"

paying attention.

Sierra Club and Natural Resources have done a great job helping us to maintain environmental standards and fight the big polluters at every turn.

I'm worried about our "progressive" elite.

my, my, my

or sense of history that you suffer from.

he's said so on many occassions.:crazy:

Bad for the narrative, though...

It is not a slight at all that Obama cannot, and HAS NOT, eclipsed some of the previous administrations. Administrations like Carters were in the midst of major change, additions of large amounts of set aside lands, parks, rivers, etc. Much of that work has already been done, and that was incredible work.

Having said that, if this administration passes a truly strong Global warming bill and/or serious energy transformation initiative, they will eclipse those greats.

But PLEEEEAAASSSSEEE! Let's stop being disengenous. There is nothing embarrasing to say that our current administration is not the best environmental President of the last 70 years. That is a very tall hat to fill. But it is foolish to try and make that comparison at this time. It just exposes one as being blindly devoted to a personality.

:rofl:

in another thread already...:rofl:

and efforts to speed the transformation to a 21st century clean energy economy."

A Breath of Fresh Air

* Worked with Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a $787 billion economic stimulus package that includes nearly $100 billion in green spending to help get the economy back on track and to create millions of clean-energy jobs.

* Outlined a "clean energy" vision for America.

* Appointed an outstanding “green team” of top advisors, federal officials and cabinet secretaries.

* Sent Congress a proposed budget that makes clean energy and the environment top priorities and includes funding for energy and environmental programs throughout the federal government.

* Declared carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases a threat to public health and welfare, setting the stage for regulating greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming if Congress fails to pass legislation to address the issue.

* Protected more than 2 million acres of wilderness land and several rivers with the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009..

* Re-established the United States as a leader in international climate negotiations.

* Restored critical protections under the Endangered Species Act, which had been removed by a last-minute rule change in the final days of the Bush administration.

* Ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its decision to deny California a waiver under the Clean Air Act, which would have enabled California and 17 other states to impose stricter-than-federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

* Reversed the Bush rule that opened the door to mountaintop removal coal mining and canceled several individual mountaintop mining permits.

* Put offshore drilling and oil shale exploration on hold and restored protections for public lands.

* Announced a new initiative to lease U.S. coastal waters for the purpose of generating electricity from wind and ocean currents.

* Repeatedly reaffirmed science and the rule of law as the standards by which federal environmental decisions shall be made.

http://environment.about.com/od/environmentallawpolicy/a/obama-first-100-days.htm

I suppose for good reason. But that was significant legislation. Obama (and congress) gets a kudo for that (IMO).

I still don't think that puts him as greatest but it does (in IMHO) place him along with the others. I will look at his environmental credentials differently. Thanks for the info.

It was one of the first things he did. And you're welcome.

Incidentally, that remark by Carl Pope (and other remarks he has made) is significant. Are you aware of Pope's background?

comments like that at face value. For instance I still think it is pretty obvious that Obama is not a stalwart peacemaker, but he get's heavy accolades in that area that are not quite deserved. Obama is charismatic, which is not a bad thing, but a lot of premature adjectives get thrown about. Glad to find out this one is well deserved! Credit where credit is due.

He is not a "stalwart peacemaker," and cannot afford to be. But on the subject of the environment...he's great. I cannot imagine what he must be thinking during this BP mess...or no, I can. I can imagine it. Good Lord, he must be praying or meditating every night.

The same kind of reaction would happen with the wars. One is justified because of attack; the other is not.

But I trust Obama. I'm around his age and mentality, and I trust him, based on what I've read and researched.

declaring...re-establishing us as a leader in negotiations... restoring... ordering... putting... announcing... and repeatedly reaffirming.

Those things are all well and good.

SIGNING is what's important though. Otherwise? Lip service.

an early point in the Obama presidency, some people are unaware of them or have forgotten about them.

:shrug:

because he/she has a recycle bin he/she can now represent all environmentalists.

:spray:

But take a look at what JPax posted. Some of it is a bit of a stretch, but also there were some very sifnificant environmental legislation. Interestingly it appears that congress likely played the lead on it (the legislation formed during Bush), which I know seems kind of unlike blue dogs to support something like this. The environmental lobby must still be pretty powerful thank goodness.

But regardless, that swings in Obama's favor for me. I suppose I can look on some of his energy policies as more of a "difference of opinion".

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Can you imagine what Obama would feel, given this catastrophe and given the fact that he grew up in Hawaii?

I'm just not that provincial and I'm too logical to afford the either/or fallacy. I understand why it might be popular on this board now, but I'm not fond of it.

-before advocating more offshore drilling and recklessly (or dishonestly) claiming it was safe.

I lived in Colorado for 11 years. But I disagree with you about offshore drilling in shallow waters. It's not an either/or situation.

...he sped up offshore drilling permits to record levels- exceeding even Bush.

I know he couldn't put 2+2 = 4. He is either oblivious or he DOES hate nature. Immediately prior to this BP cataclysm he was going to open an unprecedented amount of new off shore oil drilling leases. He couldn't do a basic cost/benefit analysis and FEEL the potential horror for the meager benefit of selling some more oil to China (You think all the offshore oil comes home? HA!) So he either was naive (his own words saying he believed the oil companies), or he simply is in the pocket of the corporations. I don't like to think the latter, because when it comes right down to it, when you sell your soul for money, you will sell anybody's life, livelihood, or ecosystem much quicker and for far less. And that is my definition of evil.

I will not guess how he feels, nor do I care (not very much anyway), I just want the oil companies nationalized. I want the stockholders to lose their shirts and the natural resource returned to the American people. I want to prevent this from ever happening again. The Gulf is dead. Period. Let's preserve the rest of our oceans, the rest of our planet before we kill the entire race.

that's true. So many people trusted BP and thought that they weren't greedy enough to operate at such depths without contingency/crisis/disaster plans.

I have talked to students of engineering, petroleum engineers, and others about this. They are all appalled at the greed involved. So it isn't the industry--it's the company, as far as I can tell.

Grudgingly. But I want to see a clampdown on extraction industries and I want a substantial--$50 billion-- in an escrow account for damages and cleanup from BP.

Check it out- first of many honest and factual expose's to come:

The Spill, The Scandal and the President

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965

took over a month to assess the situation? NO.

Any response to a complex and catastrophic event that hasn't been prepared and rehearsed beforehand is going to be error ridden and full of missteps and false starts.

Fact of the matter is that they're winging it from political, logistic and engineering standpoints.

in U.S. history. Links and quote aren't going to change that.

Not ending all offshore drilling before the explosion? Not being on the well when it exploded?

Nothing the President could have realistically done (tightening regulations, moving more rapidly to clean up the MMS, etc.) would have prevented the explosion.

...or keep making excuses for the man.

Nothing the President could have realistically done (tightening regulations, moving more rapidly to clean up the MMS, etc.) would have prevented the explosion. That's bullshit. The explosion could have been prevented had he moved moved quickly to correct the problems at MMS, which he knew existed!


Obama knew how bad the mess was in the Interior Dept (and especially MMS); Obama failed to correct the problem. Since the corruption at MMS was allowed to continue under his administration for a year and half he shares responsibility with the bush administration for this disaster.

You cannot place the blame for 9-11 on Bush, (9 months into his term), and exempt Obama from blame for deep horizon (18 months into his term).

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=1

excerpts from the articule:

"Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency's culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years."

"During the Bush years, the Minerals Management Service, the agency in the Interior Department charged with safeguarding the environment from the ravages of drilling, descended into rank criminality. ... MMS staffers were both literally and figuratively in bed with the oil industry. When agency staffers weren't joining industry employees for coke parties or trips to corporate ski chalets, they were having sex with oil-company officials........ MMS managers were awarded cash bonuses for pushing through risky offshore leases, auditors were ordered not to investigate shady deals, and safety staffers routinely accepted gifts from the industry, allegedly even allowing oil companies to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil before tracing over them in pen."

Salazar took over Interior in January 2009 vowing to "restore the department's respect for scientific integrity", and to clean up the corruption. Only he didn't. "he left long-serving lackeys of the oil industry in charge. ... One of the Bush-era managers whom Salazar left in place was John Goll, the agency's director for Alaska...Salazar also failed to remove Chris Oynes, a top MMS official who had been a central figure in a multibillion-dollar scandal that Interior's inspector general called "a jaw-dropping example of bureaucratic bungling."

"Employees describe being in Interior – not just MMS, but the other agencies – as the third Bush term," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal whistle-blowers. "They're working for the same managers who are implementing the same policies. Why would you expect a different result?"

People want to level blame against President Obama because offshore drilling is dangerous and previous administrations exacerbated the situation. Unless he ended all offshore drilling, any well could have exploded.

Bush on the other hand was handed a specific warning, which he failed to act on at all. Still, Bush doesn't get blamed for causing 9/11, he gets blamed for exploiting 9/11, using it to launch the illegal war.

Also, the President didn't ignore Bush-era actions, he was in the process of reversing them.

Like I said, tougher regulation and cleaning up the MMS would not have prevented this disaster.

Why wouldn't responsible inspections and authorization at each step of the drilling process had any chance to head this off?

Obviously, it still may have happened but real oversight may have kept some of the shenanigans from being allowed.

But the system was corrupt. Salazar should have noticed that sooner.

from being allowed."

How?

There are 48,000 rigs in the Gulf, they are not inspected weekly or even monthly. How would regulations have stopped BP from ignoring the cementing tests within 11 hours of the explosion?

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The same old tired, so-called "progressives" will just whine some more.

for whine.