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Obamas Prepare to Plant White House Vegetable Garden
Marian Burros, New York Times
On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.
While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when obesity has become a national concern.
In an interview in her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”
(19 March 2009)
Obama Tries to Draw Up an Inclusive Energy Plan
Jad Mouawad, New York Times
… The renewed fight over offshore drilling comes amid efforts by the White House to map out an ambitious new energy policy for the country. For the first time since the Carter administration, an American president is putting energy at the center of his domestic agenda.
Mr. Obama must decide what strategies are most likely to achieve his goals of diversifying the nation’s fuel supplies, developing alternative energy sources, reducing oil consumption, and curbing carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.
Part of that equation is what role the administration sees for domestic supplies. Since taking office, it has scrapped rules issued in the final days of the Bush administration that would have opened up vast new areas for offshore drilling well into the next decade.
At the same time, the administration is allowing the Interior Department to go ahead on Wednesday with a long-planned auction of leases in the Gulf of Mexico that includes 4.2 million acres that had been off limits since 1988.
For the moment, the offshore debate has been eclipsed by the economic crisis and the sharp fall of oil prices.
(17 March 2009)
See the critique by Dave Cohen: Steven Chu’s energy miscalculations.
A New Washington Team and a Fresh Game in Russia, Iran and the Caspian
Steve LeVine, The Oil and the Glory (blog), Business Week
After much gnawing over the notion, the Bush administration decided last year to issue a White House invitation to Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. That was wise — this trained dentist is one of a handful of indispensable players in Eurasian energy.
Alas, the invitation was also late — geopolitical rival Vladimir Putin had marked up a several-year-long head start of mutual state visits between Moscow and Ashgabat. And it was clumsy: the Turkmen leader was asked to come after the November presidential election. In other words, after Bush was officially a lame duck.
Understandably, Berdymukhamedov declined.
Today, the Obama administration is trying to lower the temperature in U.S. relations with Russia, what it calls a “reset.” In two weeks, President Obama will meet with President Medvedev in London. As part of the warming-up exercise, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is cobbling together a basic agreement for the presidents’ perusal on replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December.
At the same time, the administration is forming its foreign policy team for Eurasia, the former Soviet Union, and energy. Russia has largely regained the upper hand in Central Asia and the Caucasus, which Washington had treated as a region of U.S. strategic interest since it backed construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline connecting the Caspian and Mediterranean seas in the 1990s. Washington called it the East-West Energy Corridor.
Will the Obama administration get its timing better in terms of inviting Berdymukhamedov to the White House? If so, he might become friendlier toward the parade of U.S. diplomats and oil company executives who call and email me and others regularly with tales of woe regarding their reception in Ashgabat.
… The ultimate game-changer in the region would be a U.S. diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. Clinton has tried to set the stage by inviting Iran to a March 31 conference in The Hague on Afghanistan to be attended by her and ministerial-level officials from some 75 countries.
As part of the attempted thaw with Moscow, Clinton is also trying to get Russia to help forge a breakthrough with Iran. There’s talk of an Obama trip to Moscow in July.
Though Clinton is focused on other benefits to be gained by normalized relations with Iran — mainly a better chance for Middle East peace — such a change would also open up a new source of oil and natural gas. And that would change the geopolitics of Europe by diversifying its natural gas supply. That makes the Iran policy in part a new Russian policy.
(18 March 2009)
Steve LeVine is a contributor to Energy Bulletin.
