While acknowledging that offshore drilling wouldn’t produce a “drop of oil for 10 years”, Obama reversed his stance on the controversial issue while speaking in Florida.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage - I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,” Obama said.

Its partly because he’s running against a buffoon who can’t even mount a logical attack on Obama (he hasn’t been to Iraq/his trip to Iraq was all political, he’s an obstacle to lower gas prices/drilling won’t lower prices, etc).  And its partly because the messaging of our movement has been calling for higher energy prices for years, but hasn’t spent much time figuring out how to keep energy prices high when we get them, or to deal with their effects on people. 

Now I admire Obama’s willingness to oppose the myopic hype around drilling for so long.  Honestly, I thought he’d compromise on this much earlier.  This issue in itself is at best a distraction and at worst a step towards a few percentage points of increased oil production in a world beginning to wean itself of cheap energy.

Obama talking about alternatives to drilling, and not sounding too strong…

I also don’t hold it against Obama for compromising.  Its something he’s always done as a politician and that’s part of his allure to independent voters.  What I am concerned about is when this fight, instead of being about offshore drilling, is about NO NEW COAL vs ‘CLEAN’ COAL, or 100% cap and auction vs safetey valves and give aways.  This shows that Obama is likely to compromise, or be tempted to compromise.  And that means youth need to be ready to be in Washington DC in the tens of thousands, taking direct action in their communities and keeping (hopefully) our next president on track.

Obama’s messaging is good for this kind of thing.  “I’m not asking you to believe in my ability to bring about change, I’m asking you to believe in yours…”  He’s saying that even when he’s elected, its going to be up to us even more than before to mount political pressure and lead the way.

If we run Power Vote as well as I know we can, we’ll get the candidates we need.  But after November 4th, we’re not done, we’re just beginning.  That’s when we take the million young people who voted for climate champions and organize them around fighting coal, creating green jobs and continuing the power shift.