It’s Official: Obama Says NO to clean air-supports Big Oil
Read Time:4 Minute, 11 Second
President Obama just dropped us like a hot potato by supporting the Republicans and the petroleum industry
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is not going to lay down to a president who not only lied to the American people but is now working earnestly in support of Big Oil and the needs of congressional Republicans. While we had speculated that he was going to throw us under the bus, one could remain hopeful that it was just a rumor but clearly it was not.
Here is the reaction from the NRDC:
It happened on Friday, without warning, when the President cozied up to America’s biggest polluters and killed life-saving ozone smog rules that his EPA has been working on diligently for years.
What stings almost as badly as the smog is this: the White House reached into the George W. Bush playbook by delivering this slap in the face on the eve of a holiday weekend — clearly hoping that all would be forgotten by Tuesday morning.
Sorry, Mr. President. That’s not going to happen.
For one thing, the President’s pro-polluter stance is getting to be a bad habit. In the last month alone, the Obama Administration has given Shell tentative approval to drill off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge … flashed a preliminary green light for the disastrous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline … and now sided with corporate interests over every American who needs to breathe.
Where is the courageous leader who reined in Big Oil in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster … who stood up to automakers and demanded tougher gas mileage goals … who dared to champion clean energy and high speed rail?
That inspirational President is in hiding, under siege by Congressional Republicans and the American Petroleum Institute. Clearly, his political advisors decided he had better curry favor with the fossil fuel barons by throwing us overboard. We get it.
But we don’t have to take it. Listen, no one likes being dumped. But that’s politics, my friend. Getting hit is just part of the deal. What separates the winners from the losers is how you fight back after you’re knocked down.
And we ARE going to fight back — hard and fast. Why? Because the White House has obviously calculated that we will sit by quietly and take it … that there is little or no political price to pay for stabbing the environment in the back.
And they have absolutely no reason to stop selling out our family’s health and natural heritage to big polluters until they feel our outrage and anger.
I urge you to pick up the phone right now and give President Obama a piece of your mind.
Call the White House comment line at: 202-456-1111.
Tell the President you’re shocked at his decision to reject new standards for ozone smog. Tell him to defend the Clean Air Act against the latest attacks by House Republicans during his jobs speech on Thursday night. And urge him to show leadership once again by rejecting the Keystone XL tars sands pipeline, which could doom any hope for the clean energy future he promised us.
If you don’t get through the first time, call again! If the lines are jammed it means that tens of thousands of us are making our collective voices heard — and that the White House is feeling the heat.
Once you get through, please reply to this email letting me know, so we can track the success of this effort.
Making a phone call is not too much to ask. Over the last several weeks, more than 1,000 citizens — including scientists, professors and ranchers — were arrested when they staged a peaceful protest against the tar sands pipeline outside the White House.
I’m not asking you to get arrested. I am urging you to build on the momentum and media attention they created — to keep the pressure on the President to do the right thing — by calling the White House until you are heard.
Don’t let the President take you for granted. Speak your mind right now … or you can surely expect worse to come.
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council
P.S. NRDC will be giving the White House a piece of our own mind this week — in court! We will immediately resume our lawsuit to overturn the illegal, Bush-era ozone pollution standards that President Obama is now defending. If he is not willing to uphold the law and stand up to big polluters, then we will not hesitate to make him do it. And we will hold his feet to the fire, as we’ve done with every President of both parties for the past 40 years. If you want to help us wage and win this landmark fight for our right to breathe clean air, please make an online donation today. Thank you.
Please take the time to let President Obama know how you feel.
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Why did he do it? What is the rationale? Don’t say, kowtowing to big oil unless you can find a public statement to support that.
Instead, tell me what the argument was for doing vs. not doing it.
John you get the bare bones story the rest is up to the reader to investigate. The fact is limiting clean air regulations supports the mission of big oil, whether intentional or otherwise. That fact alone makes it a poor decision unless there is a plan to strengthen the regulations in lieu of those that were abandoned, but I couldn’t find any evidence of that.
I can’t get through, but people can also contact local offices of their Congressional rep, as well as their CA Senators.
As yet, I can’t find any justification for Obama’s decision, either. But I can provide a moment of irony… Richard Nixon started the EPA and NOAA.
In a July 1970 statement to Congress, President Nixon proposed creating NOAA to serve a national need …for better protection of life and property from natural hazards…for a better understanding of the total environment…[and] for exploration and development leading to the intelligent use of our marine resources…
In 1970, Nixon and Congress also established the EPA in response to the growing public demand for cleaner water, air and land. Here’s his address to Congress:
As concern with the condition of our physical environment has intensified, it has become increasingly clear that we need to know more about the total environment–land, water, and air. It also has become increasingly clear that only by reorganizing our Federal efforts can we develop that knowledge, and effectively ensure the protection, development and enhancement of the total environment itself.
I’m with palehorse on this one.
I intend to call the WH and register my complaint, whether or not it matters. At best, we can hope for a strongly progressive Congress and Senate in 2012. We also need to call our senators, Congressional Reps, and governors and vote reasonable progressives in office. The president does not control everything.
Without a clean environment, we’re all dead. If nothing survives, nothing matters.
I had to look this up: Anyone remember this Simpsons episode?
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Homer tells Kang & Kodos about the upcoming 1996 election. Kang and Kodos kidnap Clinton and Dole, and put them in suspended animation tubes. Kang and Kodos take on their forms.
Kang: “It doesn’t matter who you vote for! Your planet is doomed! DOOOMED!”
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ5yS6WRYd8&feature=related]
Kang: “I am the human known as ClinTON”
Kodos: “I am the human known as Dole.”
Kodos: We must go forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
Kang: “Abortions for all.”
Audience: Boo!
Kang: “Very well, then, abortions for none.”
Audience: Boo!
Kang: “Abortions for some! Little American Flags for the rest!”
Audience: Yeah!
“What are you going to do? It’s a two-party system. You have to vote for one of us!”
“Well I believe I’ll vote for a third party!”
Kang: “Go ahead! Throw your vote away! Hahahah!”
The episode ends with the citizens of earth enslaved and Homer saying, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.”
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk12ALX9fz8]
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When searching for this piece of Simpsonana, I found a quote from someone about this that resonated with me:
The Republicans do not dissemble. They tell you that they are for big business and they act on it. They say they want to have strong military, and they act on it. They say it’s every man for himself, and they mean it.
Fed up (I am). I feel betrayed.
I feel betrayed too Dorothy.
Oh my gawd he actually did it…he really did it. WTF BHO??
It’s very hard to believe that Obama has gone so far so fast…down! I voted for this guy eagerly and willingly in ’08 but ’12 it will be because even he’s better than the Republicans.