Obama’s energy decision worrisome

During his third State of the Union address last week, President Obama did largely what he was expected to do: defend the United States with patriotic zeal, trumpet job growth that has occurred under his presidency, and call for several progressive reforms that will probably get crushed by a reactionary Congress. However, he took a wrong turn when he made several announcements that are detrimental to the energy policy of the United States.

For a president who once touted his commitment to climate change legislation, catering to the fossil fuel industry is a low stoop indeed. But this is exactly what he did; the president opened up more than 75 percent of the country's offshore oil resources to the industry, including reserves off the Alaskan coast, and he championed the United States' vast natural gas reserves, endorsing the environmentally catastrophic practice of hydrofracking. Obama's plan at once favors oil and gas companies over the people of the United States, putting corporate interests ahead of humanitarian ones and discrediting opponents of fossil fuel development in one fell swoop.

Such a rigorous "drill-baby-drill" policy might be expected from a Republican president. But Obama, the populist, Nobel-Prize-winning, healthcare-for-all Commander in Chief? Hardly.

All things considered, Obama did push for renewable energy—a little. He promised he would "not walk away from the promise of clean energy," and implored Congress to pass clean energy tax credits. He also opened up land to development of renewables such as wind and solar, and directed the Department of Defense to invest in renewable energy. These are steps in the right direction, surely (though the tax credit proposal is likely to fizzle), but these flickers of progress are not excuses for Obama to indulge the fossil fuel industry at the expense of human health and the environment.

Obama's promise of shale development betrayed a frightening alliance with the natural gas industry. Not only did the president rely on industry figures for the estimated jobs that shale development would create, but he disregarded the boom-and-bust economies of fracking. To tout natural gas development at a time when hundreds of families (and possibly more) have had their water supply tainted by fracking chemicals completely ignores the human suffering that follows in the wake of natural gas development. Fracking has a human cost. In endorsing the practice, Obama has effectively denied the pollution and subsequent adverse health effects that fracking engenders. If the president takes no steps to bar the natural gas industry from using hazardous chemicals in its practices, then he will be responsible for promulgating human affliction across the nation.

To be fair, Obama did proclaim, "America will develop [natural gas] without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk." However, such a claim is effectively meaningless given that the Environmental Protection Agency is barred from regulating fracking (Dick Cheney inserted a clause known as the Halliburton Loophole into the 2005 Energy Bill that deliberately protected the fracking industry from being regulated). Until Obama fights to overturn the Halliburton Loophole, which he has not, then he can never ensure that human health and safety will be protected. Neither has Obama shown support for the FRAC Act, a bill which would regulate fracking. When Obama promises that human health will not be jeopardized by his planned expansion of natural gas development, it seems as if he should make regulation a prerequisite. Furthermore, from the standpoint of human well-being, fracking can never be safe until all chemicals used in the process are banned.

Though Obama promised to disclose the chemicals used on public fracking projects, such a promise serves primarily to confirm the fact that fracking releases hazardous substances into the environment. Compounding the problem, Obama made no equivalent promise for private fracking projects, though most fracking in this country occurs on private land. The president's commitment to the people who are imperiled by fracking is woefully inadequate.

Another frightening component of Obama's speech, though, was his action to expand domestic oil drilling. The president boasted about the amount of oil that the United States was extracting from its reserves, bragging, "American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years." He then proceeded to open three-quarters of American offshore deposits to the oil industry, demonstrating shocking neglect of the dangers and the faults of drilling.

Paradoxically, Obama admitted the largest problem with domestic oil development right in his speech: The United States only contains two percent of the world's oil reserves. If the United States extracts all of its available oil with no serious investment in renewable energy, then the country will go right back to relying completely on foreign oil as soon we drain our domestic reserves. Obama's directive does nothing more than to open a door for oil companies to exploit the United States' land and water and wreck her environment, for no greater cause than stuffing more money into the industry's own coffers.

It seems that in a world still recovering from the BP oil spill, the lessons of such a disaster would not be easily discarded. But discarded they have been, and by the very person who has the power to change the United States' energy future.

Offshore drilling is dangerous enough, but Obama's new initiative to drill in the Arctic is even more calamitous. Here's why drilling in the Arctic is so hazardous: Drilling will take place far away from major ports, so if a spill were to occur it would be immensely difficult to rush adequate resources to it. Drilling will also occur in a region that stays dark for much of the year, making operations all the more difficult. Add low temperatures, gale-force winds, 20-foot swells and massive chunks of sea ice into the mix, and you have a recipe for disaster. The question of a spill is not if, but when. In the Arctic climate, a spill would be nigh impossible to clean up.

Unquestionably, the Arctic ecosystem also comes into play. The seas and islands of Alaska provide vital habitats for seals, polar bears, belugas, walruses and birds, and it is precisely in these habitats that the fossil fuel industry intends to drill. Drilling would commence just off the coast of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. Since when is such action justifiable? With an industry that has never invested itself in cleanup efforts, and never intends to, why would the president even think to grant oil companies giant tracts of water?

With his announcements in the State of the Union, Obama is giving fossil fuel corporations just what they want: the ability to exploit America's natural resources and shift the burden onto the environment and the people. Obama should reverse his plans for offshore drilling immediately, going so far as to ban drilling in the Arctic; and he should halt plans to hydrofrack. Neither oil nor natural gas are viable solutions to the country's energy problems. They are not clean. They cannot be safely developed. Blindly committing to oil and gas—as Obama has done—is a gargantuan mistake.

So Obama—divorce yourself from Big Oil. The American people don't need a "drill-baby-drill" president. They need a president who will take the country's investment in dirty energy and transfer it to renewables that will sustain America for generations to come.

—Gabe Dunsmith '15 is a member of the Vassar Greens.