Technology seen key to oil sands: Chu | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Monday he believes technology can solve environmental problems associated with Canada's oil sands and that the huge nearby resource contributes to U.S. energy security.

How President Obama Made His Energy Platform 'Pop'

After a long day of campaigning on July 8, candidate Barack Obama arrived at his Chicago headquarters for a three-hour brainstorming session about a suddenly hot issue: energy and climate change.
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Obama went around the room asking the experts about oil prices (then days away from their all-time peak), oil drilling on public lands on and offshore, energy efficiency, and ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. As he listened to the group, his advisers said, he began to grasp how he could sell a low-carbon future to the American public.

"This stuff needs to pop more," he told his aides as he left the room. "We need to find a way to make it pop more."
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But energy and climate were not his specialties when he arrived in the Senate after teaching constitutional law, working as a community organizer and serving as a legislator in a state that relies heavily on coal.

But even before the late-night session in July, Obama had begun to educate himself about energy and climate and to use those issues to define himself as a politician, say people who have advised him. He read a three-part New Yorker series on climate change, for instance, and mentioned it in three speeches in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a former aide said.

How Obama Reframed [the climate change scam into a jobs and national security scam]

In an article in the Sunday edition [above], WPost reporters Steve Mufson and Juliet Eilperin detail how Obama during his presidential campaign took the lead in urging his staffers to re-frame their message on energy and climate change. As the headline notes, Obama's campaign and White House has gained traction by "re-framing" the issue in terms of jobs and national security, the type of communication strategy and bully pulpit leadership that I urged was necessary in an April article at the journal Environment.