Saturday, October 2, 2010

Clean energy projects build a strong economy: Obama

President Barack Obama used his weekly video and audio address on Saturday to tout his administration’s efforts to strengthen the US economy by focusing on “clean energy.”

According to Obama, his administration’s promotion of clean energy technology will result in “hundreds of thousands of new American jobs by 2012.”

Those jobs include contractors to install energy-saving windows, factory workers building electric cars and hybrid trucks, and crews building and running wind farms and solar plants.

However Republican leaders, Obama said, are “promising to scrap all the incentives for clean energy projects, including those currently underway — even with all the jobs and potential that they hold.”

The president urged his listeners to not “go back to the failed energy policies that profited the oil companies but weakened our country.”

The White House’s Democratic allies are expected to suffer heavy losses in the November 2 mid-term election, which Republicans cast as a referendum on the sour US economy and high joblessness.

The 21-page “Pledge to America” released by opposition Republicans in September calls for increase access to domestic energy sources and opposition to what they describe as a national “cap-and-trade” energy tax.

Republicans have often derided Obama’s clean energy policies as “job killers,” and support oil offshore drilling and drilling in the Arctic, nuclear power plants, and coal-to-liquid technology.

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