It’s all about the budget today- what kind of green nuggets are sitting in Obama’s budget? At first glance, not much. Afterall, his objectives as stated in the State of the Union are to focus on nuclear, offshore drilling and “clean” coal technologies. With all those not-green goals, who’s got time to push for actually clean and green energy?

Well, I do see a glimmer of hope. In Obama’s increasingly signature political way, he gave the oil industry one on the offshore drilling and he’s hoping to take one away by removing their government subsidies.

Wait- the oil industry gets government subsidies?!?

$36.5 billion over the next ten years in subsidies will go to the oil and gas companies in the form of tax cuts. That’s more than Obama wants to use to give small businesses loans!

According to the Obama administration, getting rid of the tax cuts and subsidies will will “foster the clean energy economy of the future and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.” Now, I agree with this move, even though it means gas prices will go up and that means the prices on everything from food to underwear to cars themselves will go up. I do not, however, agree that it will help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. It will increase prices on oil and gas- what  else will it do? Are gas and oil companies going to stop operations because they aren’t getting a tax cut anymore for low-volume oil and gas wells or can’t take a deduction on their manufacturing tax? Not hardly. Especially if Obama continues to support and facilitate offshore drilling. It’s a good economic move- one that will bring more oil production into the U.S. and one that will generate more tax revenue because of it. But it should not be presented as a green move, or as something that is helping to fight climate change. I call GREENWASHING.

And while the oil and gas industry players are whining away about how this will cut jobs and reduce domestic oil production (crap!), I think U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar put it pretty plainly:

“All you have to do is to look at record profits in the oil and gas world over [the] last several years and, in my view, you’re going to continue to see a great interest in oil and gas because it’s an essential part of our economy today. I think the oil and gas industry will do just fine.”

Thanks, Ken, for making this a pretty easy call. But it’s not an easy call, apparently, for Congress. They denied the same request to the Obama administration last year and there is little guarantee that it will work this time through.

And then right at the end Obama squeezed in a little for actual green energy:

$322 million for solar research, $123 million for wind, and $53 million for geothermal. All of these are up more than 20%, but still- look at the disparity. We need a more drastic move if you want to talk about battling climate change. Oil companies get tax deduction cuts? Weak. Solar, wind and Geothermal get less than $600 million combined? Weak to the point of nauseating.

 Photo Credit: Mr. Wright (via Flickr under CCL)