Obama, Romney talk energy

OSKALOOSA, Iowa – President Barack Obama visited an Iowa farm Tuesday where a local family grows corn and soybeans while also generating wind energy with several turbines on their 1,000 acres. Republican Mitt Romney spent time at an Ohio coal mine, speaking in front of hard-hatted workers whose livelihood depends on continued demand for their often-maligned product.

In grand terms, the fight between Obama and Romney over energy policy centers on the role of federal regulators in protecting public health and promoting particular industries for the good of the country.

Obama has pressed for newer technologies such as wind and solar, arguing that they create a path away from dependence on foreign energy supplies. Romney says the same goal should be accomplished by increasing use of oil, coal and natural gas reserves.

But in the fierce campaign for the two hotly contested states, where a few thousand voters could mean the difference in November’s presidential election, their ideology has given way to a more basic consideration: local jobs.

Speaking in a verdant Appalachian valley dotted with coal mines, Romney said Tuesday that Obama was “waging a war on coal” that was bad for such communities.

“We have 250 years of coal, why in the heck wouldn’t we use it?” Romney said, speaking in front of miners who roared in approval. “We’re going to take advantage of our energy resources to save your jobs, to create more jobs.”

Obama countered with a similar appeal to a crowd in rural Iowa, not far from the Heil family soy, corn and wind farm. Jobs dried up when a nearby Maytag plant closed, Obama said, but “folks are now back to work” manufacturing wind turbines.

“The wind industry now supports 7,000 jobs here in Iowa,” Obama said. “These are good jobs, and they’re a source of pride that we need to fight for.”

For days now, the campaigns have been trading critiques of each other’s records and visions for U.S. energy policy.

Obama criticizes Romney for supporting subsidies for oil companies while he opposes extending tax credits for companies that harness the power of wind, a rapidly developing new technology Obama sees as an industry of the future.

Romney’s campaign has made it clear that he would let the tax credit expire, believing that government shouldn’t get involved in propping up individual industries or supporting one over another.

Even though Obama has professed an “all of the above” energy strategy – one that values all domestic sources – the coal industry says his administration’s environmental policies target its production.

Many of those regulations have occurred under court order. The number of coal jobs is at a two-decade high, according to industry analysts. But utilities and producers say federal rules limiting emissions of mercury and other toxic substances for coal-burning power plants are threatening the coal industry. Some producers say they are laying off employees because of uncertainty about their future.

Paul Ryan, Romney’s newly picked running mate, hit the regulations promulgated by the Obama administration during a Tuesday appearance in Lakewood, Colo.

“President Obama has done all that he can to make it harder for us to use our own energy,” the Wisconsin congressman told supporters in a high school gym. “We will streamline the regulations, we will open up these resources so that we can create jobs here.”

Speaking in Osakaloosa, Iowa, on Tuesday, Obama lectured Romney for defending the importance of domestic oil and gas production.

Alternative forms of energy like wind and solar are great, Romney said last spring, but they don’t power cars. “You can’t drive a car with a windmill on it,” Romney said then.

With the farm crowd in central Iowa on Tuesday, Obama replied to that philosophical argument with a practical one.

“‘You can’t drive a car with a windmill on it,’ that’s what he said about wind power,” Obama said. “But if he wants to learn something about wind, all he has got to do is pay attention to what you’ve been doing here in Iowa . The wind industry now supports 7,000 jobs here in Iowa.”