Many were disappointed after President Obama’s first post-election press conference when he talked about the urgency of climate change — and then immediately swept aside specifics for action in his second term.

Days after, White House press secretary Jay Carney shot down the prospects for a carbon tax by saying the Administration would “never propose” such a policy.

There doesn’t seem to be much urgency coming out of the White House.

In response, The New York Times is calling out the President for his plan to address climate change with a “conversation”:

Since his re-election, Mr. Obama has agreed to foster a “conversation” on climate change and an “education process” about long-term steps to address it. He needs to do a good deal more than that. Intellectually, Mr. Obama grasps the problem as well as anyone. The question is whether he will bring the powers of the presidency to bear on the problem.

Enlisting market forces in the fight against global warming by putting a price on carbon — through cap-and-trade or a direct tax — seems out of the question for this Congress. But there are weapons at Mr. Obama’s disposal that do not require Congressional approval and could go a long way to reducing emissions and reasserting America’s global leadership.

One imperative is to make sure that natural gas — which this nation has in abundance and which emits only half the carbon as coal — can be extracted without risk to drinking water or the atmosphere. This may require national legislation to replace the often porous state regulations. Another imperative is to invest not only in familiar alternative energy sources like wind and solar power, but also in basic research, next-generation nuclear plants and experimental technologies that could smooth the path to a low-carbon economy.

Mr. Obama’s most promising near-term strategy may be to invoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to limit emissions from stationary sources, chiefly power plants.

Indeed, the Administration deserves credit for passing numerous critical executive policies promoting vehicle efficiency, mercury standards, building efficiency standards, and renewable energy. And with Congress unable to act on climate policy, the importance of EPA regulations for global warming pollution is even greater in Obama’s second term. However, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in on her way out, opening up some uncertainty about leadership at the agency: The New York Times explains:

Any such regulations are likely to be strongly opposed by industry and will require real persistence on the administration’s part. If Mr. Obama takes this approach, he will certainly need a determined leader at E.P.A. to devise and carry out the rules. Lisa Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator who on Thursday announced her resignation after four productive years in one of the federal government’s most thankless jobs, was just such a leader.

She suffered setbacks — most notably the White House’s regrettable decision to overrule her science-based proposal to update national health standards for ozone, or smog. But she accomplished much, including tougher standards for power plant emissions of mercury and other air toxics, new health standards for soot, and, most important, her agency’s finding that carbon dioxide and five other gases that contribute to global warming constituted a danger to public health and could thus be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The New York Times piece fails to point out one of the most critical — and often ignored — pieces of climate policy. Creating new standards for power plants and building renewable energy is only one piece of the equation. In order to truly address carbon pollution, we must keep large amounts of coal, oil, and gas in the ground. According to the International Energy Agency, nearly two-thirds of known fossil fuel reserves must stay underground in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. While the Obama Administration has done more than any other administration in history to promote alternative forms of energy, it has also shown a willingness to aggressively promote unchecked fossil fuel extraction.

In a recent Time Magazine interview, President Obama said that climate would be one of his top three priorities in his second term. So far, there aren’t many strong signals that the Administration has a coherent plan to actually back up those claims.

by RL Miller

The London-based Control Risks holds itself out as “an independent global risk consultancy specializing in helping organizations manage political, integrity, and security risks in complex and hostile environments.” Or, in practical terms, it provides anti-piracy services, handles kidnappings and other crises, and writes white papers analyzing terrorism risks in various countries.

One suspects that this expertise doesn’t come cheap. Clients buy discretion for large sums of cash, but SourceWatch notes “a long history of working with the energy sector, covering ground in Algeria, Angola, Congo, Nigeria, Russia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Sudan and Yemen.”  And now it’s advising unnamed, but presumably energy-oriented and rich, businesses how to handle fracking activists.

Because a worried upstate New York farmer has a lot in common with a Somali pirate.

The splash page on “The Global Anti-Fracking Movement: What it wants, how it operates, and what’s next” is here. You’re supposed to be able to download the report only by giving an email address to receive more briefings, and if you’re a senior executive in the oil and gas industry you can get the report and a complimentary personal briefing. For those of us who are not senior executives in the oil and gas industry and who don’t want want to give our email address to a shadowy international business that may count Halliburton and Bechtel among its clients, here is the entire report (pdf format).

The report views American environmental activists through the same hostile lens as it uses on kidnappers of Exxon executives. It is shocked to report that “A notable feature of the anti-fracking movement – shared with other social movements such as Occupy – is the extensive use of online social media to disseminate information, organise and mobilise.” (p.8)

The white paper carefully separates those who call for an outright ban from those seeking tighter regulation: “the majority of the anti-fracking movement simply wants tighter environmental regulation of unconventional gas development. With tighter regulation, enforcement and accountability, a sizeable swathe of the anti-fracking movement – from grassroots activists with single-issue grievances to influential environmental NGOs such as the UA’s Natural Resources defense Council (NRDC) – is prepared to drop its objection to hydraulic fracturing.” (p.5) And it goes on to discuss, without actually suggesting that big green groups concerned about climate should co-opt local people concerned about their food and water supply, wink, nudge (p.9):

International environmental NGOs also play a key global networking role. For example, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund) each mount anti-fracking advocacy campaigns and support local anti-fracking groups. yet in contrast with grassroots activists, focused primarily on local social, economic and environmental impacts, international environmental NGOs situate unconventional gas extraction largely within their efforts on climate change.The intervention of international NGOs has inevitably pulled the anti-fracking movement – at the global level – towards the climate change agenda, meaning that purely climate change-focused groups, such as 350.org, have obtained a prominent position. This
has occasionally resulted in friction within the anti-fracking movement, to the extent that some climate change-focused NGOs – though not the three listed above – view unconventional gas as a low carbon alternative to coal. Not only do such groups ignore
pressing local impact concerns, they may also be more amenable to tighter regulation as opposed to an outright ban.

Control Risks’ final suggestions for handling those pesky activists: “acknowledge grievances,” “engage local communities,” “reduce impacts,” and “create more winners” (pay people).  But nothing about actually listening to the activists, cleaning up wastewater, disclosing toxic fluids, or actually reducing carbon emissions. California is next in line for a fracking boom, if the clients of Control Risks have their way the federal Bureau of Land Management’s first auction of fracking leases sold 18,000 acres in ten minutes flat. The divide-and-conquer strategy is just beginning; most large green groups have stayed silent on the woefully insufficient draft regulations recently proposed, Very Serious Editorials opine that full disclosure of fracking fluids is somehow sufficient, bills being introduced echo the call for regulation rather than a moratorium, and efforts within the California Democratic Party to call for a moratorium are being watered down.

As for me, I’m not going to kidnap or terrorize the pro-fracking folk. I just don’t want them doing to the vineyards and suburbs of California what has been done to the farms of Pennsylvania and New York.

RL Miller is an attorney and environment blogger with Climate Hawks. This piece was originally published at Daily Kos and was reprinted with permission by the author.