Here is something about global warming that President Obama doesn't seem to understand: What matters isn't how much clean energy you generate or how much more efficient you make energy use. The only thing that really matters when it comes to global warming is how much greenhouse gas emissions are released into the atmosphere.
Look at it this way. If we quickly reduced all greenhouse gas emissions to zero without generating any more clean energy or increasing efficiency, that would solve the global warming problem just as well as if we also generated more clean energy and increased efficiency. The purpose of the alternative energy is not to stop global warming, but to enable us to keep living the way we want to, which requires lots of energy. But when it comes to how much the world warms, it makes no difference how much clean energy you produce.
Of course if you increase efficiency, that will tend to reduce emissions, and generating clean energy also generally reduces emissions. And of course we need to do these things. But if more fossil fuels are extracted, more will be burned. The more coal there is, the cheaper it will be, and the more the Chinese and everyone will be able to afford to burn. The cheaper natural gas gets, the more new power plants will be built to burn that gas instead of generating energy with no emissions. The dirtier the fuel (e.g. tar sands), the greater the emissions.
So this is the point: If you are allowing the refining of more tar sands oil, pushing for increased fossil fuel extraction, and spurring greater exports of fossil fuels, you are pushing the world in the wrong direction and contributing to the damage that is occurring and will occur. It's not like investing some money in clean energy and enacting new regulations for autos and power plants gives you permission to do this, any more than giving money to the poor gives you permission to commit murder. You might save some lives by helping the poor, but it is still just as wrong to murder, period. It is wrong to have policies that promote more greenhouse gas emissions, period. This is an area where "compromise" makes no sense at all.
