Obama package focuses on alternative power sources

Since oil gushed from Spindletop in 1901, the Houston area has been the energy capital of the United States and a major destination for federal dollars devoted to oil and gas production.

But the mammoth economic stimulus bill that is winding its way through Congress largely bypasses Houston-based energy giants and fossil-fuel development in favor of funding new technologies to glean power from crops, the sun and heat trapped beneath the earth.

“There’s not a lot of oil and gas” money in the stimulus bill, said Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston.

Instead, President Barack Obama’s package focuses most of its attention, and an expected $54 billion or more in energy spending, on renewable and alternative power sources, not on the fossil fuel production on which the country is dependent...

[economic and geo-political suicide]

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