Obama energy plan would open Atlantic and Gulf drilling

[The Minx]

Link

(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.

[SirNitram]

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

[Dark Silver]

I have not a single problem with this.

For one, this helps assure *I* will still have work for awhile, as drilling continues on in new fields (those who don't know, I work in the oil field industry, on the Exploration and Drilling side of it).

[LadyTevar]

The real battle will be when he tries to 'clean up' the coal-fired electric plants.

Coal Miner strike in three... two....

[General Havoc]

I support this measure.

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.

I find myself saying that more often than I used to. That's a good sign.

[Derek Thunder]

The question for me is - what's the trade-off? A sensible person would use something like this as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from Republicans, possibly on a cap-and-trade bill in the near future. However, it doesn't appear that the administration is getting anything from this - Republican responses were muted to negative. Is the adminstration still holding out for that mushy "bipartisanship" that has never actually existed outside of sanitized history books? I don't get the politics, it just seems like a pointless give-away to a party that devotes an entire 24-hour news network to calling you a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Fascist who was born in the deep, dark, still-beating jungle heart of Africa.

Come to think of it, I can't really think of any issue recently where the White House didn't decide to stick it to Liberals in some way. Of course, liberals not turning out to vote in this mid-term cycle will simply result in Republicans getting elected and the media narrative will invariably be "the Democrats need to run to the center." Really, the only thing I can think of is a liberal primary challenger to Obama in 2012.

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.

The problem is that this does nothing (and may actually be counterproductive) in addressing the real problems of our energy economy - piss-poor urban planning, low-density suburbs requiring vehicle travel, supply chains that discourage local agricultural production and transportation, and inefficient power distribution networks. Eventually we will hit a point of maximum oil production, and at this rate we're going to be caught with our pants down when prices start a steady upward climb to reflect ever-decreasing supply.

[SirNitram]

The trade off might simply be taking a Republican talking point away from the opposition and making them sound like crazed idiots. Plus, it's a useful feint. The oil and gas companies have huge amounts of offshore land they have permits for. They.. Don't use them.

[General Havoc]

The thing is worth doing on its own merits, with or without republican concessions. By this point it's become clear that the republicans would vote against an Obama-sponsored bill criminalizing child sacrifice just to be obstructive. I don't believe that the existence of other things that should be done means that we should do nothing.

[Comrade Tortoise]

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

Oh, I will scream. I will scream even though I voted for him. Why? Because I only voted for him because he was less repulsive than Dumbshit and the Beast.

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.

[frigidmagi]

Peak Oil and rising sea levels are going to happen whether he drills or not. The question is can he make sure the time we buy with this oil (what is it? 2 years? 3 years? less?) is used to get the whatever alternatives we can find in place?

I hope so.

[General Havoc]

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.

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. If we do not drill for this oil, we will burn some other oil somewhere else. You KNOW this, because you're an academic and a reasonably intelligent person, and yet what do you do? You equate the two. Consequently you come across as a bitter Luddite, and nobody listens to you, and you sit around wondering why.

Whatever the actual risks of drilling for this oil is, "This drilling = death of all living organisms" is a transparently stupid argument, and you know it, and you know that it gives everyone who wants to a perfect excuse to dismiss every rational concern you might actually have (and which you have studiously avoided making), so why make it? 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?

Do Republicans not do a sufficiently effective job of demonizing environmentalists, that the environmentalists need to demonize themselves yet further?

Obviously what arguments you make to me on an obscure forum in the wilds of the internet matter not at all. My question is why is this exact argument always the one that gets aired? Every time a nuclear plant or oil rig or anything is proposed, we're treated to a litany of world-sundering catastrophes that will inevitably result if this one specific program is enacted, that are so obviously beyond hyperbole as to be laughable. As a result, real, actual, valid concerns are ignored, because the people proposing them are either the same ones or associated with the same ones who claim that the building of a nuclear power plant will result in the radioactive death of half of the United States. And consequently, things actually get worse.

Liberals are not stupid people by and large, so why the hell does this keep happening?

[Derek Thunder]

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.

E: 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.

[General Havoc]

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).

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".

Bullshit.

Organized labor has had it no easier than the environmental movement. Neither did the Civil Rights movement, nor anyone else who tries to effect sweeping change in major societal systems. I do not deny that there exist large, vested interests that have sought by every means available to them to discredit the environmental movement. The reason however that they have such an easy time of it is that the environmental movement does half of their work for them in sabotaging itself with this sort of crap. The reaction that CT gave here, and that I (probably unfairly) castigated him for was the default reaction you get from most discussions on the environment.

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

It is not hyperbole to suggest that Nuclear War is a bad thing. It is gross hyperbole to suggest that this specific drilling decision will itself end life on Earth. However even if we concede that hyperbole is an effective rhetorical tool, the environmental movement has employed it to the point where it has no efficacy whatsoever anymore. "Britain will be depopulated by the year 2000. Malthusian catastrophes will kill off half the planet before the 21st century. Sea Levels are going to rise eighty meters within the next decade. The Arctic will be ice-free by 2010. Acid rain will render Los Angeles uninhabitable by 1990. The Great Lakes will contain no life forms within five years. The Gulf Stream is shutting down. Hypercanes are going to ravage North America. And every conceivable thing that is currently happening and will ever happen into the future of the world is due entirely to global warming."

Hyperbole may be an effective tool, but it is not effective when you cry wolf with it all day long. Nobody believes environmentalists when they start spouting world-ending predictions of doom and gloom, and the reason nobody believes them is because the perception is that that is all they do. Absolutism and hyperbole are all that's there.

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.

"Shall we look into improving air quality standards on coal-fired plants?" "There's no such thing as clean coal."

"Yes, but we've got immense reserves of coal, perhaps if we researched better methods of employing it to reduce the environmental overhead. It might be made, if not clean, at least cleaner than oil-fired plants."
"There's no such thing as clean coal."

"Perhaps not today, but surely with advancements in technology and increasing regulation we could - "
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN COAL!"

Obviously, the above is hyperbole (which does, I'm aware, make me a hypocrite), but it illustrates my problem. This absolutist mentality pops up again and again on every issue I know of, from nuclear power to carbon cuts to yes, offshore oil drilling. It means that when the so-called "concerted propaganda campaign" tries to paint the environmentalist movement as a band of kooks who wish to kill 75% of the population and reduce society to a pre-industrial state, people believe it, because that's frankly what they sound like to me. So in consequence (to use the Coal example above), the Coal industry points to the environmentalists and says "look how stupid these people are", and is granted license to strip mine, pollute, and otherwise fuck everything up with no mitigation.

Not every environmentalist is an absolutist luddite. Hell I would say that probably very few environmentalists are absolutist luddites, so why do so many go to such great lengths to SOUND like absolutist luddites, when all it does is give people license to ignore real environmental problems like Global Warming and Peak Oil by making them sound like the monsters living under the bed?

"Don't ever drive a car or the Global Warming monster will get you!"

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 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.

Yes, it's an EXCUSE. An excuse to disguise the real problems with the environmental lobby's mandates and arguments. An excuse to avoid having to face the fact that a lot of their predictions and demands for total societal re-shift are overblown. Not all of them certainly, but a lot. The environmental movement likes to hide behind the "big oil is out to get us" card to avoid any criticism of their techniques and tactics. Big oil IS out to get them, so why make their jobs easier?

Liberals are supposed to be representing reason and fact and progress, against the entrenched forces of heirarchy and tradition. That's the entire purpose of liberal politics. They're supposed to be the guys with real evidence and rational thought on their side.

They should act like it.

[Derek Thunder]

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".

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.'

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

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

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.

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.

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]

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.

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€

[Comrade Tortoise]

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.

What? Do you not think that if we continue to burn fossil fuels, the supply will be exceeded by demand, that we will acidify our oceans (BTW, a .1 drop in pH is enough to kill off a whole hell of a lot of marine organisms upon which the global food web depends). Increased variance in temperature and precipitation is already causing problems with erosion and drought. And we are already causing a rate of extinction a few orders of magnitude beyond the time-averaged background rate.

That was not hyperbole. It was flat out truth.

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.

What it does is increase the supply of oil, and thus decrease the price. This causes more consumption and creates a certain amount of breathing room that decreases the perceived urgency of the development of alternatives. By opening up drilling, we help absolutely nothing, and have the real risk of causing harm in the long run.

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?

Because I am not in a large public forum. Here, I can give the short version. Now that you have engaged me, I can very easily give the full reasoning for my position.

Other objections are of course damage to marine ecosystems, and the fact that it will be 10 years before any oil is extracted and therefore there will be no short term gain in oil extraction that will "tide us over" until the proverbial dinner that is oil independence. What it will do is drop prices later and increase consumption then, when we most need to decrease it. Not a good strategy.

[General Havoc]

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.'

Al Gore is not the republican-appointed Pope of global warming. He's the self-appointed Pope thereof, and most republican talking points veer away from him in favor of guys like James Lovelock or others of his ilk. Gore, as you said, does not make Luddite arguments about the necessity of population culling or the abrogation of democracy, which is one of the reasons I think Gore should do MORE talking about environmentalism, not less. Many other self-proclaimed messiahs of the environmental movement do engage in such things. I'm holding in my hand as I write this post, literature sent to me from the Sierra Club describing the necessity of all right-thinking citizens to "support changes to the US Constitution in accordance with international law to criminalize opposition vocal or otherwise to necessary measures taken to prevent climate change."

Neither I nor any republican talking point made that up. That's a direct quote from the Sierra Club, one of the largest and most effective environmental lobbies in the country, founded by the late great John Muir. The Sierra Club is an organization I've supported in the past and hope to in the future once whatever they wake up from the fit of hysteria I assume has come over them.

There are serious and endemic problems with the messaging that the environmental lobby has been performing, and hiding behind the notion of "right wing strawmen" does not address them.

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.

Organized labor is effectively dead for about fifty different reasons, including bureaucratic infighting, failure to broaden their base into new industries, the societal shift away from heavy industry to a service-based economy, and, yes, massive corruption on the part of both organized crime and special interest money. They were not destroyed by a "business-funded media campaign". The Teamster's union, the largest union in the country was in fact a mafia-run front that strong-armed workers and limited upward mobility. So were the longshoreman's unions of both coasts. These facts were documented extensively through decades of investigations. Not to mention before destroying themselves, the labor movement in this country established the minimum wage, child labor laws, the eight-hour day, equal opportunity laws, paid holidays, worker safety legislation, and a host of protections we now take for granted, all without the use of over-the-top world-ending hyperbole.

And we haven't even discussed the civil rights movement.

Not every ill that befalls a left wing movement is the fault of vast republican conspiracies to commit evil. Acting as though these institutions are beyond criticism is a good way to ensure they will get even more ineffective.

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.

A matter which the administration resorted to when it became clear that there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq to speak of. Had there actually been nukes or solid evidence thereof, I would imagine that evidence would have been used to push the case for war.

Moreover, that argument was made in 2002, when the Bush administration had not yet developed a reputation for hyperbolic lies. The Environmental lobby has been using hyperbole of this sort for four decades. For all I know, it was once effective. It is no longer so. They have cried wolf too many times to be believed when they claim that there is yet another impending Armageddon coming that we must avert by doing exactly what they say without question.

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).

I'm not making an argument in favor of clean coal. I don't know enough about the subject to do so. What I'm saying is that I find it impossible to even have that discussion because the first mention of the word "coal" is met with a litany of "There is no such thing as clean coal" lines (not by you, obviously, but by the environmental movement in general). The topic of coal is off the table into perpetuity, because they say so. There are certainly downsides to coal, as there are to nuclear, as there are to everything (including solar and wind power). But even if coal is not viable now for the reasons you cited, is it impossible that it will become so in the future? Perhaps in decades, perhaps less? I've heard, for instance, good results about biotech solutions to carbon sequestration regarding coal emissions, but I can't find out more about that subject because whenever I ask, I'm told "There is no such thing as clean coal" and accused of being a shill for the Coal industry.

I'm no expert, but heavier-than-air flight was also "scientifically impossible" once. I'm not inclined to believe people who simply chant "there is no such thing as" to me and use that as the basis for ending the discussion. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Whenever a scientist says that something is impossible, he is usually wrong."

I'm not claiming that all or most or even a large portion of the environmental lobby engages in these tactics, but many of the ones who proport to speak for environmentalism do. This is not just the voices of a few wingnuts. I don't believe that environmentalists wish to nationalize my car and arrest me for speaking my mind. I do however hold proof in my hands that lots of environmentalists are quite happy to portray themselves that way, something that has nothing to do with republican spin machines or right wing talking points. They cease to be right wing talking points when the environmentalists themselves are the ones talking about them.

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€