President Obama's Remarkable Success in Energy and Climate Issues

While the extremist Pee-Tardies are swallowing their tongues in a rage over the GOP House Select Committee's report on BENGHAZI!, this news is making the rounds.

If a Republican president presided over this much success in achieving energy independence, they would have built a living memorial, a living pantheon, to him or her.  But because a Democratic president has presided over this accomplishment, all the conservative media, pundits, and bloggers can do is bellow:

BENGHAZI!  BENGHAZI!   BENGHAZI!



However.  Fact are stubborn things, and this speaks for itself:

"That’s quite some record for a president widely panned as “hating” the oil industry. Energy independence for the US – with huge dividends not only in lower oil prices but also in greater freedom of action in pivoting away from the Middle East – is within reach – a goal, like universal health insurance – that presidents have aimed for for decades. Has this made tackling climate change even harder? Not if you look at another part of the Obama years – the rise and rise of renewables, fostered in part by subsidies."  --Andrew Sullivan



Today, the NYT lays out the remarkable new renewable energy environment at hand:

The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas. Utility executives say the trend has accelerated this year, with several companies signing contracts, known as power purchase agreements, for solar or wind at prices below that of natural gas, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, where wind and sunlight are abundant. Those prices were made possible by generous subsidies that could soon diminish or expire, but recent analyses show that even without those subsidies, alternative energies can often compete with traditional sources. 

"So we have a big boom in shale and a simultaneous collapse in the expense of renewable fuels. We have far greater energy independence and the beginnings of a renewable energy revolution. On top of this, we have strict new fuel emissions standards, much tougher carbon emission standards and a pact with the Chinese to curtail carbon over the next few decades. What, one wonders, will historians make of this record? I suspect a lot more than today’s pundits, don’t you?"--Andrew Sullivan





Will Mr. Obama get ANY credit for this? Don't count on it. The Pee-Tardies would rather eat shattered glass and drink vinegar than acknowledge a win for this president.