As the debate on global warming rages, as the price of gas keeps rising, as I read stories about people struggling to pay for gas to get to work, I have this vague memory of a press conference about energy in the first Bush term that made me cringe when I first heard it.
Today, I used the Google on the internets to try to find the source of something that made me so uncomfortable that I remember it seven years later. Here is the link to the entire press conference, but the answer to the following question made me squirm way back then.
Q Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?
MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.
Squandered opportunities for seven years, no plan to deal with the energy crisis, but of course, it is all Barack Obama's fault!