A while back I got an email forward entitled, “A Few Questions for President Obama.” As you may suspect, it was really not meant as a good faith attempt to enlist answers but a pathetic attempt to outrage readers into blaming an environmetal catastrophe on environmentalists. So it begins:

America needs decisive leaders who understand what government can (and cannot) do to stop the Gulf gusher, clean up the mess, and get business, jobs and prosperity back on track. Instead, President Obama sounds like an anti-business Community Organizer in Chief – pointing fingers, making baseless claims about ending our “addiction to oil,” and leaving no crisis unexploited to promote job-killing cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy agendas. His June 15 “vision” raised more questions than it answered.

Remind me again, who were the ones saying over and over again that drilling offshore was safe? Who were the ones who kept pushing more and more deregulation, saying business had enough self-interest to regulate themselves? What exactly would McCain be doing now that would make everything better? Not that I think Obama is doing a great job of it, but Republicans are obsessed with making this more of Obama’s fault than BP’s.

This easily avoidable environmental disaster happened because BP, its contractors and MMS regulators did not follow procedures or respond properly to tests and warning signs, indicating critical trouble was brewing downhole.

That’s one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that BP broke every conceivable safety standard on every level.

>With thousands of environmental activists, regulators and trial lawyers on Team Obama, one can imagine what creative damages and costs might be concocted, to convert the initial $20-billion BP fund into a bottomless money pit, and what “standards” might guide bird death valuations, for example.

So I guess he’s with Bart Stupak and thinks we should be apologizing to BP for making them pay damages to the people whose livelihood they destroyed? Excuse me while I play the world’s smallest violin. BP volunteered the $20 billion and the guy managing the fund is the same guy who managed the 9/11 fund.

ExxonMobil paid $600,000 when 85 birds died in uncovered waste facilities.

The Associated Press reported the $600,000 in fines is what Exxon-Mobil generates in revenue about every 20 minutes based on the company’s $8.6 billion earnings for the first half of 2009.

America is not running out of oil.

No, we’re just running out of icebergs.

Will we now open the ANWR, Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, Rockies and near-shore OCS to drilling – where access and development are easier, and accidents (that we hope, and industry must ensure, never happen again) can be fixed and cleaned up far more easily than in mile-deep waters?

Geez, not ANWR again. Personally, I don’t care if they drill there. They can move all the caribou to Canada for I care, but it’s ain’t gonna change shit. All of this ANWR and offshore drilling – they make up like 1% of the world drilling market. If we opened it all tomorrow, it would change the price of gas by a couple of pennies in like 20 years. Considering gasoline doubled in price for like 6 months, I would say all this ANWR and drilling bullshit is a red herring — something only oil people should give a damn about — but I guess it is useful if you’re trying to indoctrinate Conservatives into faithfully serving Big Oil in whatever they may ask for in the future.

Will President Obama lift his OCS moratorium (which even his independent safety experts opposed), before it further devastates the battered Gulf economy, rigs head overseas, and thousands of experienced workers leave the industry for other lines of work?

I agree that 6 months is too long and a rather arbitrary length of time. I would like prolonged inspections of all the rigs out there, but the inspectors should decide when to bring them back on line, not Obama. However, the moratorium doesn’t affect oil wells that have already been dug and are producing oil. It just affects new wells being dug.

How will US wind and solar factories compete with Chinese and Indian facilities,

Huh?? Haven’t noticed any Chinese or Indian electric companies or gas stations around in this country.

How will regulators and “clean energy” companies deal with the nasty pollutants generated in the process of manufacturing hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and millions of acres of solar panels? How will they handle highly toxic silicon tetrachloride, the powerful greenhouse gas nitrogen triflouride and other chemicals used or generated in making solar panels, fiberglass and other components?

Ummm, my guess is they’ll throw it away like all the other crap generated from manufacturing everything else. It’s not like it’s nuclear waste (not that he’s complaining about that!).

How long will this Grecian Formula be sustainable?

Uhh… news flash: our economy is nothing like Greece. But if we do what the Republicans want and start cutting back, we are going to experience a lost decade just like Japan.

Every seven million gallons of corn-based ethanol requires billions in subsidies, cropland equivalent to Indiana, millions of gallons of water and millions of tons of fertilizer, to make fuel that costs more but gets less mileage than gasoline. Can someone explain how this is eco-friendly and sustainable?

Unless we want to the planet to turn into Venus, we’d better make it sustainable.