Obama Assails Remarks by McCain on Offshore Oil Drilling

[bananas]

Source: NYT

<snip>

Mr. Obama illustrated the gap between the candidates by giving a speech at a water plant in Las Vegas that laid heavy emphasis on $150 billion worth of alternative energy, including wind and solar power and hoped-for clean coal technology (Mr. Obama acknowledged, in response to a question, that he was not ruling out nuclear power, but he strongly suggested it was a distinctly lower priority). He asserted that these investments in technology would yield five million new jobs.

He also proposed to charge oil companies an undefined fee for every acre that they lease but fail to drill on. Oil companies now lease but are not drilling on about 68 million acres, according to the Obama campaign.

“If that compels them to drill, we’ll get more oil,” Mr. Obama said. “If it doesn’t, the fees will go toward more investment in renewable sources of energy.”

<snip>

“Germany, a country as cloudy as the Pacific Northwest, is now a world leader in the solar power industry and the quarter-million new jobs it has created,” Mr. Obama said. “To truly harness its potential, we urgently need real leadership from Washington — leadership that has been missing for decades.”

<snip>

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/us/politics/25campaign.html

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Full text of speech at http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gG5RCv

[happygoluckytoyou]

1. GO BAMA!!!!! ahh yes... leadership.... we sailed on that once... long ago...