Unfortunately, I believe the word fits Obama to a tee - so far, he has shown us only potential.  It's a damn shame, really.  One would think someone with such great fashion sense (seriously, who wears a long, white tie and actually looks good in it?), not to mention charisma and intelligence could pull off something big.  Only time will tell if he will be one of the few to rise to the occasion and actually achieve his potential.

In other news - to plug the ethanol fuel thing, why did they choose a big fat guy filling up his big fat truck?  Sigh again.

Now that he is out of office, Clinton is saying some good things:
Clinton on peak oil and global warming
Clinton: not briefed on peak oil
Clinton reads Heinberg on peak oil

And Gore of course.

I've voted Democrat for decades, so this cluelessness does not make me happy. I'm uneasy at the prospect that the Democrats will regain power and be unprepared for the energy challenges that will face us.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

The only solution I can comprehend is agreeing to a global panel with the power to implement carbon restrictions. We have to take the issue out of the hands of elected officials.

Sort of like the base closure principle.

Ethanol may in some ways be a good idea, but the best idea about cutting expenditures in the Middle East is simply to stop spending so much money on wars and supporting regimes there.  What we've flushed down the tubes in Iraq alone was more than our costs in implementing Kyoto would have been.

The failure of the American auto industry has been about their own poor business decisions and labor inflexibility fostered by bad management.  Barack is talking about a huge bailout of these firms - but we should all understand that this bailout is going to happen anyway if they go into bankruptcy - at which point their huge pension liabilities will be assumed by the federal Pension Benefits Guaranty Co.  It's at least woth considering what kind of deal with these firms might be worthwhile, even while acknowledging that their competitors now are largely manufacturing in the US.

Predictably, on either side of the political aisle, politicians like to give handouts to their constituents - handouts that essentially go from taxpayers' pockets to particular commercial interests.  That's where Barack is coming from.  This practice has made a mess of US energy policy, together with the related phenomenon of growth of the defense budget, which acquires bases and creates problems overseas, all while providing great dollars to US defense industries and temporary political benefits to war presidents and to the related CongressCrittters.

The right energy policy is to get the government out of the energy market altogether, except the following:

• defense costs related to oil-producing countries should be paid through gas taxes by those who directly benefit, rather than by American taxpayers only.  This will never happen, but would serve to put to focus drivers' attention on our counterproductive ME policies.

• climate change is a problem because fossil fuel producers and users essentially can use the atmospher as a free GHG dump, even while doing so has real costs that we and natural ecosystems bear in the form of climate change.  The way to solve this is through GHG taxes or by establishing GHG emissions rights that can be purchased and sold.  Creating incentive-based systems will shift economic behavior and investments in technology throughout the economy, and much better than the government can do by inconsistent efforts to throw money at "alternative" energy technologies.

The way to move ahead will obviously involve getting those now blocking policy to move - if need be by targetted subsidies and by creating a GHG permitting scheme in which permits are distributed without charge (rather than by auction).  On permits are distributed, a market will be naturally created and carbon emissions will be priced.

A few years ago, it was widely considered unpatriotic and dangerous to national security to criticise or even comment on Bush's Iraq policy. Now, I think people see him as having let them down in the security department. If Climate Change becomes the burning security issue--and I think that's just beginning to happen--then maybe we'll see the public take the government to task in a way we can't appreciate now.

Again, I like all the good ideas and criticisms that people have put forward... it's an important discussion that we need to have now. But I think that in a year's time, our ideas will be couched in a very different way, because the framework will have shifted considerably.

Hey, he makes a great Senator from a depopulated state, and a good talk show host (no slight on his well-known POW status).

But a leader?  Someone who has the ability to make a right choice...where one side gets angry and another is pleased?

That's why GW is President.  He takes the actions of a Zen warrior.   There is always a right choice.   It can take effort or it can be easy.   But making the decision to take only the right choice is hard.

See the recent post by Jerome a Paris for the latest info and links to the original documents.

There's no reason that Republicans and other political parties can't pick up on the ideas too.

Bart
Energy Bulletin