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(CNN) -- President Obama unveiled plans Wednesday to open large swaths of U.S. coastal waters in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas drilling -- a move likely to please the energy industry but upset the administration's environmentalist supporters.

The administration plan would include lifting a 20-year ban on drilling off the Virginia coastline, while putting the clamps on sites such as southwest Alaska's Bristol Bay. Parts of the Arctic Ocean off Alaska's North Slope, however, could be accessed.

The plan authorizes the Interior Department to conduct seismic surveys off the south- and mid-Atlantic coasts to "determine the quantity and location of potential oil and gas resources to support energy planning," according to a statement from a White House official.

What are your hopes for the environment?

Roughly two-thirds of available oil and gas resources in the eastern Gulf of Mexico would be opened to drilling if a congressional moratorium on oil and gas operations in the region is lifted, according to the statement. Drilling would occur more than 125 miles off the Florida coast.

"This is not a decision that I've made lightly," Obama told an audience at Maryland's Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility.

"But the bottom line is this: Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs and keep our businesses competitive, we're going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy."

The president was joined during his remarks by the secretaries of the interior, energy and the Navy, as well as the chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

GOP leaders have pushed strongly for additional domestic drilling to lessen America's dependence on outside energy sources. One top Republican, however, argued Obama's plan does not go far enough.

"It's long past time for this administration to stop delaying American energy production off all our shores," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

"Opening up areas off the Virginia coast to offshore production is a positive step, but keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources of the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking 'Where are the jobs?' "

A top Senate Democrat also ripped the decision, arguing it could harm marine life while damaging the economy in coastal communities.

"Giving Big Oil more access to our nation's waters is really a 'Kill, Baby, Kill' policy," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey. "It threatens to kill jobs, kill marine life and kill coastal economies that generate billions of dollars. Offshore drilling isn't the solution to our energy problems, and I will fight this policy and continue to push for 21st-century clean-energy solutions."

Environmentalists critical of Obama drilling plan

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, warned that any offshore or onshore plan should proceed in an environmentally and fiscally responsible manner.

"Taxpayers who own these resources have been historically shortchanged from the huge profits received from drilling on public lands, and must receive a fair return in the future," she said.

Another key Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, praised the move, calling it "good news and a positive step forward as we work to expand our nation's domestic energy production."

"Moving forward on the mid-Atlantic offshore proposal will provide an opportunity to determine the scope of our region's offshore energy resources, the economic viability of accessing those resources and the potential impacts on our environmental and national security priorities," he said.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, joined Warner in enthusiastically backing the decision.

"Virginians will benefit from the thousands of jobs that will be created and the economic activity and development that will accompany this vital industry's arrival in the state," McDonnell said in a statement.

Obama sought to portray his decision as politically pragmatic and centrist, balancing the country's growing energy needs and environmental concerns.

The administration has been "guided not by political ideology, but by scientific evidence," he said. "We need to move beyond the tired debates between right and left, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure-all and those who would claim it has no place. Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again."

The president warned that increased drilling could only be a partial solution at best. The United States controls less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves but accounts for more than 20 percent of global oil consumption, he noted.

White House spokesmen Bill Burton and Ben LaBolt said the announcement was being made at Andrews -- the home base of presidential airplane Air Force One -- because it's an appropriate place to discuss energy security.

In addition to discussing his plans for offshore drilling, Obama talked about the importance of making greater use of biofuels. The U.S. Air Force is the Pentagon's largest consumer of jet fuel, consuming 2.4 billion gallons annually, according to Burton and LaBolt. The Air Force, however, is attempting to transition to a greater use of alternative fuels.

In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation are set to sign an agreement Thursday establishing fuel economy standards for cars and trucks for model years 2012 to 2016.

"We are implementing policies that will greatly reduce our dependence on foreign oil," the official said, noting the White House is leading by example and will announce the purchase of 5,000 hybrid vehicles for the federal fleet.

Frankly, oil ain't goin' anywhere for a long time, and I would prefer that we get it domestically than from Saudi Arabia or some other damn place. I am with the President on this one.

SirNitram wrote:And the liberals will begin screaming because Obama did as he said on the campaign in three, two..

Comrade Tortoise wrote:Onward! To Peak Oil and Rising Sea Levels!*

*And ocean acidification, variance increase in temperature and rainfall, an even larger mass extinction etc etc etc.

Derek Thunder wrote:Actually, the reason why the environmental movement isn't taken seriously is a concerted propaganda campaign on the part of energy producers and big polluters (Scientific American reports). That, and a presidential administration that has decided to put climate on the back burner. "Well, if it's such a low legislative priority, it must not be important at all!" This recent decision on offshore drilling honestly does lend credence to the idea that Obama is shuffling any action on climate towards a second term (that's being optimistic, I admit. Clinton really didn't do anything and he had 8 years).

Also, just FYI, hyperbole is an effective rhetorical tool. "We can't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud" and what-not.

Derek Thunder wrote:Allow me to elaborate so I don't sound too snarky. The idea that people can be swayed by rational argument is a sort of anachronism from the Enlightenment. Asking the environmental movement to keep to pragmatic arguments is asking them to fight with one hand tied behind their back - words matter, metaphors matter, and rhetoric matters. The other side presses forth with the argument that "CO2 can't be bad, we breathe it out! Plants need it to live!" Now, most educated people (but not all) can see through that, but for the average voter that sort of over-simplistic rhetoric has a lot of sway. As an example, the term "death tax" is an over-simplistic euphemism for the estate tax, but it was used to great effect by Frank Luntz and the Republicans to lobby so effectively against it. Same with phrases like "government takeover of healthcare" - it was similar focus group-tested phrases that helped bring down Clinton's healthcare reform package in 1994. You know how during the health care debate how conservatives loved to say that any reform would "come between you and your doctor?" That's another example, and through repetition it became common wisdom among pretty much everyone on the right.

That is not "the" reason why it is not taken seriously, it is merely a reason for it, and despite that article, I do not believe it is the sole or necessarily even the primary reason. The Environmental movement has done a bang-up job of shooting itself in the foot for thirty years, and continues to do so to this day. And every time someone calls them on their utterly amateur and ineffective tactics, their lack of message discipline and effective lobbying, on the ideological scrums that occupy half of their time, and on the utterly noxious spew of vindictive rhetoric that they permit many of their so-called advocates to fill airtime with ("all people are sheep, democracy is evil, tell your kids that daddy is a war criminal for driving a car"), their response is that they are the victims of a vast global conspiracy to "keep them down".

Organized labor has had it no easier than the environmental movement.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that Nuclear War is a bad thing.

Take the whole myth of Clean Coal for instance. You know the slogan. "There's no such thing as Clean Coal". That, right there, as best I can tell, is the sum total of the Environmental position concerning coal. "There is no such thing as clean coal". Even if that's correct (and I believe that it is), that is the environmental lobby's answer to every discussion concerning coal.

That is just arrogance and excuses. "Everyone is too stupid to believe me when I argue rationally" is the same "sheeple" mentality that got the environmental movement into this mess in the first place. This malignant notion that the average voter is somehow "beneath" you, and that you should therefore make shit up rather than engage with them is just an excuse.

But if we take a step back, and place this study in the context of a growing body of research in psychology and political science, there’s another message in these findings: The political brain is an emotional brain. It is not a dispassionate calculating machine, objectively searching for the right facts, figures, and policies to make a reasoned decision. The partisans in our study were, on average, bright, educated, and politically aware. They were not the voters who think “Alitoâ€

THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE is the reason why nobody takes the environmental movement seriously. THIS EXACT SHIT. This repetitive hyperbolic screaming fit that bears no resemblance to reality is the reason why people continue to deny Global Warming and Climate Change in the face of all evidence, because this sort of crap gives the impression that nobody on the left is willing to engage in rational discussions about the topic, rather than defensive arm-spasming.

Obama opening up drilling off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts or NOT opening up drilling off the coasts will not alter any of the things that you just spoke of.

Why, of all the myriad of objections you could foster to this drilling plan, would you sortie the one that not only is ridiculous on its face, but makes your entire side of the argument look like a millenarian cult?

Derek Thunder wrote: I think you're mistaking the right-wing strawman of environmentalists for the actual thing. Al Gore, the republican-appointed Pope of global warming, has not stated that people should abandon their cars by the roadside and surrender to UN climate police, nor has he ever called for neo-ludditeism. The environmentalists I hear in mainstream debate are calling for reasonable things - limits and/or caps on carbon dioxide emissions, more fuel-efficient transportation, greater emphasis on public transportation, and production of energy from renewable/carbon neutral sources such as wind, solar, and so forth. I'm frankly not sure what you're watching/reading, but I haven't seen the rhetoric you're describing on even self-admitted left-liberal media outlets like 'Democracy Now' or 'Bill Moyers' Journal.'

Yes, and they're now effectively dead outside of a few niche industries due to a concerted business-funded media campaign to paint unions as mafia-run fronts who strong-arm workers and limit upward mobility. A cautionary tale more than anything else.

It was hyperbole to predict that Iraq would strike the United States with nuclear weapons (directly or by proxy) when no serious analysts outside the Bush Administration believed that to be a likely scenario.

But there's an assumed premise in your argument that coal can be mined and burned without net carbon emissions (or low carbon emissions) and for the foreseeable future that just isn't the case. Carbon sequestration as a practical technology is decades away, and comes with a high efficiency cost that cannot realistically be reduced (capturing carbon and injecting it into underground reservoirs takes a lot of power). I think nuclear is a better example of where the environmental movement may be misguided, but even nuclear has downsides (high start-up costs, the problem of waste disposal, etc).

Derek Thunder wrote:Human beings are not cognitively rational and respond to emotional arguments and rhetoric (abstract to this effect). We seek out information that confirms our pre-existing biases because it causes a positive, even pleasurable emotional response, and reject anything else. That's simply the way the world is, any successful political movement has to realize that and work in that context.

Edit: Here's a great excerpt regarding confirmation bias and the 2004 election.

But if we take a step back, and place this study in the context of a growing body of research in psychology and political science, there’s another message in these findings: The political brain is an emotional brain. It is not a dispassionate calculating machine, objectively searching for the right facts, figures, and policies to make a reasoned decision. The partisans in our study were, on average, bright, educated, and politically aware. They were not the voters who think “Alitoâ€