Obama: “the American People Aren’t Stupid” (on “Drill, Baby, Drill” Strategy)

February 24th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan

Obama absolutely nails the idiocy of “drill, baby, drill” in the video below, as well as the sad state of affairs in politics today — where the Republicans “licking their chops” about rising gas prices.

As we covered last night, drilling more for oil isn’t going to make gas prices fall, and as Obama notes, this has been the “bumper sticker” strategy of the GOP for 30 years (and it obviously hasn’t worked).

Thank you, Obama, for bringing a little bit of needed detail to the issue of rising gas prices and our foreign oil addition.

And, wow, he actually very enthusiastically talks about our need to develop wind and solar energy.

But he’s goes on beyond that, and even goes off script to note how younger generations (such as his daughters’) are so much more aware of the commonsense fact that natural resources are limited and we have to conserve them. In this segment, he also notes the important fact that the U.S. consumes over 20% of the world’s oil reserves but only has 2% of them.

Here’s the first video:

And here’s the text of a key part of this Obama segment via Brad Johnson of Think Progress but edited a bit to make it accurate with the actual words of Obama (and, as much as possible, his emphasis):

I mean, the American people aren’t stupid. They know that’s not a plan – especially since we’re already drilling. That’s a bumper sticker. It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. That’s a strategy to get politicians through an election. You know there are no quick fixes to this problem. You know we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices. If we’re going to take control of our energy future, and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year when the economy starts getting better, world demand starts increasing, turmoil in the Middle East or some other parts of the world, if we’re going to avoid being at the mercy of these world events, we’ve got to have a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy – yes, oil and gas, but also wind, and solar, and nuclear, and biofuels, and more. We need to keep developing the technology that allows us to use less oil in our cars and trucks, less energy for our buildings and our plants and our factories. That’s the strategy we’re pursuing, and that’s the only real solution to this challenge.

And here’s the second video, followed by text, edited and added upon, from what Brad Johnson shared on Think Progress:

[A]nybody who tells you that we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about or just isn’t telling you the truth. And, and, and, you know young people especially understand this, because, you know, it’s interesting, when I talk to Malia and Sasha — you guys are so much more aware of, you know, conserving our natural resources and thinking about the planet. The United States consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil, more than 20% of the world’s oil, just us. We only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves. We consume 20, we’ve got 2. And that means we can’t just rely on fossil fuels…

Great speech.

Obama photo via Justin Sloan

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Tags: Obama, obama drill baby drill, obama drilling, obama energy, obama gas prices, obama solar, obama wind, Republicans

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

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R-One.

Number 1. Obama is a F-ing Surf, number 2, we have more oil rigs / feilds in the USA than the world combined. so Obama, STFU and set the war off so we can get this over with already. The Globalists must have war, it worked in WWII. The world is broke on purpose.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Seek help.
  
  Therapy, pharmaceuticals, or combination of the two might pull you back from the abyss….
Dcard88

When you face the reality that we are stuck with the deniers until the evidence gets stronger (although the temp seems a LOT higher this winter and if summer follows we could possibly see the anomally/spike of a +1 degree for the year that one would expct on occasion, which might actually persuade a significant percentage of the deniers), we might be smart to take an ‘everything’ path. Approve 5 or 6 third gen Nucs and build some more gas and clean caol plants. As long as we dont slow down on alternatives and converting all the dirty coal plants, we will still get to the point where alternatives are the same cost in 10 to 20 years. By then (and of course sooner is possible) science should be able to come up with some excellent energy storage solutions that will make all the arguments moot.
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  For one, the evidence is there. They’re called ‘deniers’ for a reason — they ignore the evidence. But, really, the issue is that industries and people threatened action away from fossil fuels are manufacturing doubt.
  But, yes, we’re crossing that “it just makes sense in EVERY single way” point in some industries now — geothermal and wind are the cheapest energy options on the grid. and others are reaching that point fast.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Why build nuclear plants which will be very slow to bring on line, make electricity more expensive, and create even more hazardous waste for which we have no solution?
  
  —
  
  ”
  (Dr. Alexander MacDonald, Director of the Earth System Research Lab at the) U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was in Vancouver on Friday for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual convention and mentioned in a talk there that clean, renewable energy (not even including hydroelectric) could cheaply supply 48 states of the continental U.S. with 70% of its electricity demand by 2030. The other 30% would be half from fossil fuels and half from nuclear and hydro.
  
  “NOAA embarked on the renewables project three years ago, collating 16 billion pieces of weather data derived from satellite observations and airplane observations and weather station reports,” Scott Simpson of the Vancouver Sun writes.
  
  “Then it designed a program to filter the information to remove unlikely venues for wind or solar power arrays – such as national parks and urban areas – and came up with a map showing robust wind resources in the middle of the continent and decent ones in the northeast Atlantic states, as well as strong solar production areas in the desert southwest.”
  
  But here’s where the NOAA researchers stepped beyond the good to the great, research-wise: they balanced potential power production and electricity demand to determine, how, where, when, and to what extent clean energy could produce the electricity we need. The end result — 70% of electricity demand….”
  
  http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/20/clean-energy- could-supply-u-s-with-70-of-electricity-by-2030-no aa-director-says/
  
  That’s with technology we have at hand right now. The price (“cheaply”) is right. Wind is extremely less expensive than new nuclear. Solar is about the same price and falling quickly. Geothermal is cheaper than nuclear.
  
  We already have more than the 7.5% nuclear needed. We could even shut down some of the most dangerous plants.
  
  We already have the hydro.
  
  As storage prices fall we can replace the 15% fossil fuel portion.