Obama: Blame the Iraq War for Lack of US Climate Change Leadership
Oh, I admit it; I’ve fallen hard for Obama. Perhaps it is his handsome face or eloquent manner of speech, or perhaps it is because he is the first viable candidate (sorry Kucinich and Nader) to speak the truth. First, Obama opposed the gas tax holiday, designed to distract Americans from the bigger picture of our energy usage. Now, he is blaming the Iraq war for America’s utter failure as a climate leader.
Shortly after last week’s primaries, Obama stated:
I think the way we have run this war in Iraq has lessened our ability to move our allies. It has led us to ignore the critical needs for us to focus on a sound energy policy in this country. It has left us unable to lead on critical global issues like global warming. And it has led us to neglect what ultimately is the most important thing to keeping America safe, and that is having an economy that is the envy of the world and that gives us the resources and the power to project ourselves around the world.
I couldn’t agree more. Not only is the Iraq War being fought over false pretenses, but it has strained the US budget and distracted Americans from the greatest threat to national security: climate change. Many lives have been lost in Iraq, although Americans have been largely shielded from the realities of this war by the media. The media will not be able to shield Americans from the increasing effects of climate change.
Of course, Obama is not perfect when it comes to energy policies. In 2007, he reintroduced the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007, which supported research and plant construction in order to convert coal into diesel engine fuel. This is not the right climate solution to lessen our foreign oil dependency. Considering that “Illinois basin coal has more untapped energy potential than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined“, is Obama supporting liquid coal fuel for political reasons?
This presidential race is not about race or gender. This race is about climate change, and which candidate will lead America to become an environmental role model in the world. As Obama stated in his interview on CNN, “…if the United States regains its — its sense of who it is and our values and our ideals, that we will continue to set the tone for creating a more peaceful and more prosperous world.”
Image: Flickr-Barack Obama
Perhaps Obama is not so wrong in his suggestion to turn coal into liquid fuel, especially if he proposes that there needs to be better ways of doing it than the ways that we know today.
The process that is still in use in South Africa, for example, makes use of a technology that was developed in the 1930s. It consumes about 2/3 of the input coal to add heat to the process for splitting H2 out of steam and for then combining it with C from the coal to produce a liquid hydrocarbon.
An friend of mine has been working for several years using his own money to develop a much more friendly process that consumes none of the coal during the heating process and produces a very high quality diesel fuel that has none of the contaminants in the original coal. The process can be done at the mine with the residue put right back where the coal came from. Instead of hundreds of train cars leaving mine each day, the product can be piped away. Instead of it having to be shipped across the ocean at great expense, it can come from the efforts of US workers. Instead of the US spending its treasure protecting supply lines to unstable oil countries, we can put that money to much better use. We might even be able to reduce the vast quantity of fuel consumed by warships, tanks and fighter jets.
Sure, there is still CO2 produced when the manufactured hydrocarbon is burned, but there are hundreds of millions of cars and trucks on the road today. I do not think there is any chance at all that we can suddenly stop using them.
If you want more information about the process, you can search for Liquid Coal.
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