Wednesday, February 25, 2009

President Obama on Carbon, Climate and Energy

President Obama's prepared remarks for the speech last night ran to 5900 words. Here's the WhiteHouse.gov version.
A quick search shows the following word counts:
Climate- once
Carbon- once
Energy- fourteen occurrences
This focus was easy to see coming. As long ago as the early summer of 2008 we noticed various actors attempting to frame these interrelated issues to their personal and political advantage. These observations prompted this comment at Environmental Capital in July '08:
C’mon guys, get with it!
Global warming is so last year.
Everybody, from Al Gore to the blogs you link to are reinventing themselves and talking energy.
Energy production
Energy cost.
Energy security.
It’s all about framing and re-framing.
Low impact man’s time has come and gone. The eco-soirée has moved on to erudite discussions of thorium between nibbles at the canapés.
By this winter the only references to carbon among the salon crowd might be Carbonic acid (H2CO3).
You watch.
Comment by
Climateer - July 22, 2008 at 8:37 am
This stuff is all political and investors must keep an ear to the political ground or risk tremendous losses. There are only two viable approaches to rentseeking investing and politicians,
buy 'em or play 'em.

We must have the mindset of the first recipient of the prestigious Climateer Investing "Our Hero" award, the 26th Secretary of War and Democrat and Republican (!) Senator from Pennsylvania:
I'll close with my standard quote, from Simon Cameron.
From our post on biofuels, March '07:
Finally for investors in rent-seeking organizations there is the real risk that the politicians will change the rules. Heed the words of Sen. Simon Cameron (R&D!-Pa.):
"The honest politician is one who when he is bought,
will stay bought."

Our Hero
Simon Cameron