President Barack Obama’s political response to the Gulf oil spill has exacerbated long-simmering tensions on the left over climate-change legislation and oil drilling.
The conflict came into view this week in the aftermath of Mr. Obama’s Oval Office address on the spill, when environmentalists, bloggers and even sympathetic commentators accused Mr. Obama of failing to lay out a tough legislative response that seized on the public’s outrage over the spill.
Complicating matters, green groups themselves have split over whether to attack or support the White House.
In his address Tuesday, Mr. Obama pledged to work for a climate bill, but said he was open to ideas from both parties. He pointedly didn’t embrace proposals that have strong support on the left to cap carbon emissions and cut down on drilling. That prompted a week-long series of attacks on the president from some of his closest allies.
“I’ve been disappointed,” said Kyle Ash, a lobbyist for the activist group Greenpeace. “This really is just a slightly better version of what I would have expected a Republican White House to do if there was a disaster like this in the Gulf.”
A number of liberals also turned their fire on long-established environmental groups that remain closely allied with the administration, including the Sierra Club. The group’s executive director, Michael Brune—prompted by liberal blogger Jane Hamsher, who said the group was playing “an inside game” with the White House—shot back on the Huffington Post website. He noted how he and his colleagues had mobilized to block expansions of coal mining and oil drilling.
Full story: Oil Spill Exposes Widening Environmental Rift Among Liberals – WSJ.com