Obama: a choice between prosperity and decline  

Bloomberg has an article on an Obama speech on the importance of green collar jobs ("The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy; it’s a choice between prosperity and decline") and opening up the outer continental shelf to wind and ocean power projects - Obama Says U.S. Moving to Open Coast for Wind Power.

President Barack Obama said his administration is taking steps to begin leasing tracts off U.S. shores for electricity-generation projects using wind and ocean currents.

The president said the initiative will open the way to “major investments” in projects on the Outer Continental Shelf and that interest already is high in putting wind-power turbines off the coasts of New Jersey and Delaware. He also said he will continue pursuing a “market-based cap” for emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to climate change. “The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy,” Obama said in Newton, Iowa. “America must be that nation.”

Obama delivered his Earth Day message in a central Iowa town that is trying to rebound from the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs by replacing them with work tied to alternative energy. The president, in promoting his budget plans, ties the goal of greater energy production with building a sustained economic recovery. ...

The areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have the potential for 1,900 gigawatts of electricity, more than twice the nation’s current power capacity, according to the Interior Department. There is also potential power from wave and tidal projects offshore.