Obama’s most recent weekly address continues to drill home some of his most important new talking points, and they are, for the most part, very clean-energy and energy-efficiency focused. The video is above, but I’ll pull the points out again here and expound on them a bit:
- Jobs are coming back to the U.S., and its from our efforts to build better stuff. In particular, jobs are being created in manufacturing plant after manufacturing plant where American companies are producing more energy-efficient vehicles and appliances.
- “Technologies that help us get more miles to the gallon is one of the easiest ways to save money and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” Yep.
- Obama mocks, for the third time in recent weeks, the absurd and ineffective plan of some politicians for reducing gas prices — “drill, drill, and drill some more.”
- Obama notes that oil production in the U.S. is at an 8-year high. (Not something I think is going to help the most pressing problem facing humanity today, and perhaps the most pressing problem in the history of humanity — too much burning of fossil fuels, resulting in global warming and ocean acidification. However, the point certainly shows that Republicans and FOX News have no right to claim Obama is trying to stop or slow U.S. oil production and drive up gas prices,.. quite the reverse.) Going on, Obama notes that his administration has “quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs and opened up millions of acres for drilling.”
- “… with only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices. Not when we consume 20% of the world’s oil.” Duh.
- “We need an ‘all of the above’ strategy that relies less on foreign oil and more on American-made energy — solar, wind, natural gas, biofuels, and more.”
- Obama also goes on to note his administration’s focus on fuel-efficient vehicle legislation, which has been considerable. Of course, people save a ton of money by driving more fuel-efficient vehicles. (Of course, people could save a TON more money and energy by using other modes of transportation, like bikes and mass transit, but as long as people are driving, we need this push for more fuel efficiency.)
- And, again, for the third time in recent weeks, Obama drilled home that oil companies have been getting $4 billion in subsidies, subsidies the oil industry has been getting for nearly a century. “Outside of Congress, does anyone think that’s a good idea?” Obama says he wants Congress to redirect those subsidies from an industry that “has never been more profitable” to the companies building these clean, fuel-efficient technologies of the future that will really do something about our consistently rising gas prices and our harmful oil addiction.
h/t ecopolitology
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