John Podesta knocks greens on natural gas

[alp227]

Source: Politico

White House adviser John Podesta took aim Wednesday at environmentalists who have criticized the Obama administration’s support for natural gas.

“If you oppose all fossil fuels and you want to turn that switch off tomorrow, that is a completely impractical way of moving toward a clean-energy future,” Podesta told reporters during a roundtable discussion at the White House.

“With all due respect to my friends in the environmental community, if they expect us to turn off the lights and go home, that’s sort of an impractical suggestion,” he added.

Podesta’s comments were in line with the administration’s long-running talking points, but they‘re likely to anger many in the liberal wing of the environmental movement, which has launched increasingly aggressive attacks against fracking and liquefied natural gas exports.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/john-podesta-natural-gas-environment-energy-104836.html

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National Journal: Podesta: White House Ready to Plug Methane Leaks

[djean111]

2. So that makes fracking okay?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. Here's a hint. Most environmentalists aren't Greens.

Greens were one specific small political subset that included both environmentalists and people with other political agendas that overlapped.

"Environmentalists" include a hell of a lot more folks. And everybody should be an 'environmentalist', unless they have somewhere to live that isn't part of the 'environment'. Unless you've got another planet somewhere, we've all got to live on this one, and trashing it is a pretty stupid thing to do.

[blackspade]

5. This is not about the Green party.

It's about environmentalists most of whom are probably democrats.

But keep up the deflection.....

[Earth_First]

6. :facepalm:

Greens = political party.
greens = a proponent of environmentalism.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

7. Wrong.

The Supreme Court and a corrupt Florida electoral system gave us Bush.


And Nader has nothing to do with how devastating fracking is, what a load of horseshit.

[ctsnowman]

10. Exactly!

[blackspade]

4. With all due respect, fuck you Podesta.

“With all due respect to my friends in the environmental community, if they expect us to turn off the lights and go home, that’s sort of an impractical suggestion,” he added.

And no serious environmentalist is saying 'turn the switch off tomorrow.' We are saying don't keep installing new ones, and then turning them on.
Natural gas is better to use than coal, but the way it is acquired is fucking up whole sections of the country for the profit of the 1%.
And coal mining is still going on, as is the use of petcoke, a horrid byproduct of tar sands refining.

[Nihil]

15. You really don't need the first four words there. (n/t)

[Doctor_J]

8. "but we need their votes this November, and it's their fault if we lose"

[hatrack]

9. Oh, yeah, NOW i remember! Hiring Podesta was a sign of how serious PBO is re. environment!

Good thing I remembered!

[ctsnowman]

11. LOL

[RandiFan1290]

12. lol

[Javaman]

13. I have solar panels.

I don't use a single linear foot of natural gas.

so what is he driving at?

money. that's all it comes down to.

[jwirr]

14. So if we do not have a practical plan to move toward alternatives - what is your great plan? The

problem is that none of us seem to have an overall plan for moving away from fossil fuels. When we were installing electricity across the country we had a cooperative called the REA and the government promoted it. Today they want each of us to somehow do it for ourselves. Divide and conquer?

[JoeyT]

16. Everyone opposed to fracking can STFU.

Because you're stupid and your opinions don't matter. Remember to GOTV!

No one expects them to turn off the lights and go home, we expect them to stop poisoning the groundwater for profit, and no matter how violently they beat that strawman they know it. A UFO nut lecturing us on being realistic. It doesn't get any more priceless than that. Podesta can fuck right off.

[KamaAina]

17. Fracking is not the correct way to increase the supply of natural gas

Barry Commoner pointed this out in "The Politics of Energy" way back in the '80s. We should be generating gas from biomass, distributing it through the existing infrastructure of pipelines, and gradually replacing drilled gas with it.