The President’s Oil Spill Speech

Nicolas Loris / June 15, 2010

President Barack Obama delivered his first Oval Office speech on the heels of his latest visit to the Gulf region – the fourth since the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in April.   With such an environmental and economic crisis present, the president needs to exert leadership to protect our precious coastal resources and clean up the spill.

His message was the wrong one.  Instead, he continued to politicize the crisis by pushing for cap and trade legislation and to establish a separate claims fund – financed by BP – that will do very little to address the issue at hand.  President Obama is right in saying that the Gulf region will bounce back, but not with the policies of cap and trade and banning offshore drilling that he’s suggesting.

Never Waste a Crisis – Pushing for Cap and Trade, Green Mandates:

The President has been using the oil spill to push cap and trade and “clean” energy investments forward, but global warming legislation—placing caps on carbon dioxide emissions—would do nothing to improve clean-up or to prevent future spills. It would distract from the very efforts to clean up and stop the oil that must be the top priority now. Nor would emissions caps magically create new problem-free sources of alternative energy. Instead, global warming legislation would raise energy costs for all Americans and kill much needed jobs. (more…)