I have the tragic duty to inform you that energy, not the environment, will be the key issue going forward.

We are probably past peak oil. That means that fuel for your car and airplanes will get prohibitively expensive.

Ties to ethanol won't matter as it's not a decent fuel going forward. Some of this finally hit the popular media this week in a cover story on TIME MAGAZINE. I suggest you read it. Also, Energy Return on Energy Invested for ethanol makes it a non-starter anyway.

Nuclear is a serious issue as a *Democrat* (Harry Reid) halted Yucca Mountain. As a result, there is already no place to put spent nuclear fuel.

When people are cold they will burn anything. Germans practically denuded forests near the end of WWII in search of heat.

They won't be thinking about global warming at that point.

You will find, sadly, that people refusing to give up the creature comforts they have grown accustomed to will come in all political stripes.

And don't forget that America is roughly 5% of the world's population but uses about 25% of the world's energy. As a result, when peak oil hits, America will be the country most in crisis.

THAT is the issue that we should expect will focus all our attention.

The idea that all energy companies are evil, or that having a tie to an energy company is a bad thing, is fatuous. Exelon is not out drilling for oil, it's a provider to consumers. Change consumer habits before bashing on Exelon.

The idea that Obama failed to hold Exelon accountable is just as misplaced. He introduced the bill at issue. The only purpose of the bill is to place a mandate on companies like Exelon. If that mandate was diluted, continue to recall that it was Obama, not Hillary, who wrote and introduced the bill.

It's like blaming the guy for voting present on a bill he introduced and was negotiating changes to in the Illinois House. It's either a badly thought through criticism that holds no water, or, as when made in debates against Obama by people knowledgeable enough to know better, clearly disingenuous.

Here we go agian, "I was for Obama before i was for Hillary, but now I'm for Hillary"

PLEASE, this is getting tedious, I commented on another post how as a former Edwards supporter, I am impressed at how Obama's people just sreem to be getting more and more enthused about him, I have yet to actually meet, in person, someone who has flip-flopped from Barack to Hillary.

I'd like to see some of yours and rallyround's earlier posts uspporting Obama, ones with the same conviction and certitude in them you express for Hillary.

I am getting doubtful that there is a legitimate former Obama fan who has defected to Hillary, at best those who are concern-trolling now were fencesitters, at worst they were Hillheads all along and they are being very disingenuous by calling themselves "former Obama supporters."

I've seen a lot more Hillary supporters change their loyalties over to Obama, and some of the reasons for it have been well defined on this blog.

Just a note of observation;
The word "disingenuous" is popping up a lot lately, describing Clinton's "fans."

In fairness, I don't think that either of them have been able to get much done in terms of energy or the environment since most of the time they've been in the Senate it's been under the chokehold of the crazy global-warming-is-a-hoax crowd. From what I understand both have proposed quite a bit of legislation on these issues which have naturally gotten stuck in committee.

Awhile back I went over their legislative records to see what bills and amendments they had passed/helped pass.
Obama

S.962: A bill to amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to reauthorize and improve the carbon capture and storage research, development, and demonstration program of the Department of Energy and for other purposes. Originally sponsored by Senator Bingamen, Senator Obama and 5 other senators signed on as co-sponsors the day it was introduced.

S.AMDT599: An amendment to the budget to add 200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy.

S.AMDT 670: To provide for Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV) refueling capability at new and existing refueling station facilities to promote energy security and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

S.AMDT 851: To require the Secretary to establish a Joint Flexible Fuel/Hybrid Vehicle Commercialization Initiative, and for other purposes.

There's more, but I'm too lazy to format it all in here right now. It's all in Thomas, and I may write up a post about it later. You may be surprised at the amount Obama has done: it's not overwhelming by any stretch of the imagination but it's certainly not nil. I think they've both wanted to do more as Senators.

This is precisely why I'm holding out for a 2/3rds majority this year.

I have had some questions about Factcheck in recent weeks. I doubt that they are as non-biased as they purport to me. They twisted and parsed and found a way to compare Hillary and Barack's legislative record to explicitly exclude one of his best legislative achievements in the Senate, the Lugar-Obama Non-Proliferation Bill. They had to find just the right criteria in order to exclude it from his record. I started to look back on other issues, and they do this more often than makes me comfortable. I no longer trust their comparisons.

Relying on their criteria for the energy bill, they neglect to say that there were additional taxes on the oil companies in the 2005 bill and that it was the only way to get research money for renewable fuels in this administration. I think we could parse the bill and find reasons for voting for it or against it. It's another case where Factcheck goes to the trouble of making Obama look bad.

I find Hillary's history to be center-right on issues of great import: war, in general, flag burning amendments, voting against the cluster bomb ban, voting against the Levin Amendment that would have required Bush to come back to Congress for war authorization. I have also never seen her fight for progressive causes against political will. I have very little faith that she will "fight" for progressive causes in the future, despite her populist rhetoric. Despite her rewriting of history the CLinton administration, with her help, supported NAFTA vigorously. The Telecommunications Bill was horrible for fair media, welfare reform was a right wing dream come true. The deregulation of the banking industry was dreamed up by Clinton and Bob Rubin. It made Rubin rich and helped usher in the credit and mortgage crisis we are in now. The Clintons have repeatedly caved to the right wing.

Hillary will run a center-right administration if she is elected. She has been disturbingly silent on habeas corpus, transparency in government, the restoration of the Constitution so vigorously trashed by Bush.

I have no confidence that we will get the progressive ideals everyone thinks they will get out of Hillary. Throughout their political careers, they've talked that game and voted the opposite or supported opposing legislation.

Dear NG,

A fine post, this. I am an Obama supporter, but I will not deny that there are many fine things to be said for Sen Clinton, and I am obliged to you for pointing out some of the more choice elements.

Only the most superficial treatment of ideas about "environmentalism" really make this look like a clear win.

Let me ask you: Can you explain, in your own words, why the 2005 bill of which you write is "bad"?

I can tell you one reason why it may have been good: If you actually believe that carbon dioxide which is released from human activities is the chief cause of global warming, which I'm guess that you do since you used the buzzphrase "carbon neutral", then there are two things that must be done. The first is that we have to stop burning coal and the second is that we have to stop burning gasoline in automobiles.

"Green" has become a funny word these days. Beware people who throw it around. It's funny that plants are where the "green" comes from and they like carbon dioxide quite a bit.

Go do a little research and realize that you can take all of the renewables you want and add them all up and none of them will replace coal. Period. There's only one replacement on hand and it's nuclear power.

Also, it's not entirely clear that carbon dioxide is the culprit, but even if it is it has a half-life in the atmosphere of something near 50 years. If you really understand how elevated the levels of carbon dioxide are in the atmosphere right now and if you really believe that these levels have been enough to trigger an acceleration in growth rates of global average temperatures AND you understand the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere, then you know that global warming is with us to stay. The damage is done. The question is no longer how to stop it, it's how do we cope with it.

Now let's bring peak oil into the picture. US oil production peaked in the early 1970s, right on schedule with Dr. Hubbert's prediction. There's good reason to believe that Saudi Arabia has recently peaked. They were the last hold-out. This means that we've already used half of the oil in the world. And we can't get to all of the second half. Petroleum as a source of energy will never again be cheaper than it is right now (I'm talking about in the long-term, not day-to-day fluctuations in the barrel price).

Because of industrial farming techniques, which include petrochemical-based pesticides and fertilizers and petro-fueled farming equipment and transportation there's something like 10 calories of petroleum energy in every food calorie we consume. In the case of certain crops, these industrial techniques increase the output of an arable acre by an order of magnitude.

Food prices are rising right now. This is why. Get ready for more.

Think about what this will mean if predictions of global warming come true. We live in a society that is absolutely dependent on industrial farming. The warming trend has the potential of creating water shortages and moving the Northern Hemisphere's greenbelt northward. Ask yourself: If you had to live on food that was not driven to you, could you do it?

Anyone talking about creating "green-collar jobs" and "carbon trading" is a bullshit artist. We've already screwed the pooch. So, I'm not at all impressed with switching to fluorescent lights. It's the height of pandering or the height of ignorance. Take your pick.

Again, I'll ask you: Can you explain to me why this bill is "bad"?