Month 10, Day 4: The President Says We’re Still Gonna Do It. How? I Dunno.

I wrote about my experiences in DC in this diary on Daily Kos.

And now…

The New York Times:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said revamping U.S. energy policy would be a top priority next year and may have to be done “in chunks” rather than through one piece of legislation, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

In an interview published on Tuesday, Obama lamented that more progress to fight climate change had not been made since he took office, and blamed the economy for that failure.

“One of my top priorities next year is to have an energy policy that begins to address all facets of our over-reliance on fossil fuels,” Obama told Rolling Stone.

My letter:

The fact that President Obama’s first two years in office were focused almost entirely on health care and financial reform rather than on climate change is a reflection of the damage that decades of Republican malfeasance and media collusion have done to our country. If we had a responsible “opposition party” instead of the aggregation of nihilists who’ve made progress impossible, the health care debate would have ended by June 2009; financial reform would have passed by September of the same year, and we’d be having a rational discussion about the pros and cons of regulating carbon emissions. If we had a responsible media, our national conversation would be just that — a conversation. Instead, we’ve heard delusions of “death panels,” blathering about “bailouts,” and a readiness to deny the overwhelming scientific evidence regarding the most serious existential threat humanity has ever faced. President Obama’s task is a formidable one.

Warren Senders