Obama on Energy

Obama on Energy. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

The price of gas at the pump has gone up again. As I was filling the tank on my car the other day I was wondering if there was any other commodity that we could wildly yo-yo the price on like oil and get away with it. Over the weekend the President spoke to a crowd at Argonne National Labs about our energy future.

OBAMA: We produce more oil than we have in 15 years.  We import less oil than we have in 20 years.  We’ve doubled the amount of renewable energy that we generate from sources like wind and solar -- with tens of thousands of good jobs to show for it.  We’re producing more natural gas than we ever have before -- with hundreds of thousands of good jobs to show for it.  We supported the first new nuclear power plant in America since the 1970s.  And we’re sending less carbon pollution into the environment than we have in nearly 20 years.

But in regards to the spikes in oil prices the President says the only way to deal with that is to get automobiles off oil.

OBAMA: much of our energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together.  So what they’ve proposed is let’s take some of our oil and gas revenues from public lands and put it towards research that will benefit the public so we can support American ingenuity without adding a dime to our deficit.
We can support scientists who are designing new engines that are more energy efficient; support scientists that are developing cheaper batteries that can go farther on a single charge; support scientists and engineers that are devising new ways to fuel our cars and trucks with new sources of clean energy -- like advanced biofuels and natural gas.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.