Republican Rapscallions

Obama's speech given at Georgetown seems to finally affirm one of his progressive planks that helped him garner the youth support that pushed him into office. His dedication to curbing oil consumption is imperative to combating climate change, but like any politician, he set deadlines way into the future that could arguably be met in a shorter amount of time with more heavy-handed policies. While these theoretical policies would be undoubtedly less popular, and particularly with his anti-environmental rightist opposition, they would be much less easier to undo. For example, Obama set the goal to purchase only fuel-efficient government vehicles by 2015, but if a Republican wins the election in 2012, this ambition could easily be reneged on. I'm thinking specifically of a paralleled story of Carter installing solar panels on the White House only to be removed by Reagan when he took office.

Another aspect of the debate between the right and left regarding energy is how to prevent, and then curtail any environmental regression the Republican-majority house may permit to happen. Just one among many examples is Senator Vitter's intention to promote domestic drilling, particularly in Alaska, as well as block certain EPA anti-pollution regulations. This second stipulation made my jaw drop - why would these policies exist if it weren't agreed on that they should in the first place? The thought occurred to me that perhaps Senator Vitter's true ambition would be to go down in the history books as a martyr at the hands of some radicals such as Earth First, but this suggests that our bureaucratic and highly partisan system can sustain itself long enough for this debate to develop any lessons worth publishing in a history book. I'm inclined to think that because of these weaknesses of our political system, as well as the long list of cons related to capitalism,there will not exist an opportunity to analyze the contemporary history of the United States in light of the way things are now.

One final thought rests with a particularly succinct and sarcastic tweet from political pundit Matty Glesias: "The good news about Obama's new energy policy is that even if it were better, it still wouldn't pass congress."