Double down on oil and trouble? Not so fast: fracking bans in oil country and common sense on infrastructure might turn the US a deeper shade of green between now and 2016
Sometimes it feels as if Sarah Palin won the last two presidential elections. Were not quite living in Drill Baby Drill America, but by co-opting the other Republican energy slogan, a meaningless plan literally called All-of-the-Above, President Obama has opened up vast new areas to offshore drilling and pushed hydrofracking for oil and gas onshore. Even as the president says that we are closer to energy independence than weve ever been before, sometimes it seems like the US is becoming a repressive petrostate.
And then some days, like the day after the midterm elections, it feels like a complete victory for Palinite politics. The Republicans took back the US Senate, and the only Democrats who won major races were those like Andrew Cuomo, who defeated my Green Party campaign for governor of New York with a $45m campaign war chest provided by a few hundred super-rich donors Democratic and Republican ones.