President Obama seems to be sending out mixed signals as far as fuels and energy generation go. While the Obama administration has been saying that it is tough on dirty fuels the claim falls flat when you hear that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday announced an enormous expansion in coal-mining in the U.S. About 7,590 million tons of coal currently in federal land in Wyoming will soon be leased to mining companies.
A number of mining contracts have been cancelled citing the clean water act in the last year and now the same administration has allowed an enormous expansion in coal mining. This will increase the U.S. climate pollution by more than half of its current emissions. The Wild Earth Guardians, Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife are all environmentalist groups who have sharply reacted to the proposal.
The Obama administration seems to rhetorically embrace clean energy by supporting modest wind and solar investments but seems to be putting a big store in developing fossil fuels alongside. When President Obama visited Brazil he displayed this amply by first praising green energy and then gushing over the discovery of oil offshore from Brazil. Even going so far as to say that the US will be happy to buy oil from them when it was developed.
The green energy that he praised there, such as the biofuels and hydropower, has proved environmentally destructive to the nation. The massive deforestation that has occurred in Brazil was due to the heavy reliance on these two types of fuel. So its not quite clear just what Obama and his administration stand up for.