Senator Obama spoke yesterday as the Texas and Ohio primary results were coming in. In the midst of the usual inspirational plea to change America, he said something that caught my attention (video: 00:25 seconds in):

We believe that a child born tonight should have the same chances whether she arrives in the barrios of San Antonio or the suburbs of St. Louis, on the streets of Chicago or the hills of Appalachia.

In a presidential primary where climate change is barely even acknowledged, and our nemeses King Coal and Big Oil buy blocks of commercial time at every political event, I was surprised to hear Obama mention Appalachia. What was more surprising is Obama’s insistence on our need for ‘clean coal’, and eventually, of developing the economic and environmental scam called coal-to-liquid fuel.

The only blocks in Texas that consistently voted for Obama were African Americans and youth, and this is very ironic. African Americans are disproportionately affected by pollution from coal fired power and climate change. Similarly, youth will be the ones that will have to deal with the incompetence of our predecessor. It is about time that we tell our candidate, the one that we are elevating to the nomination, that he needs to reshape his energy platform to reflect his people, the people of the future.