Energy Secretary Steven Chu Discusses Gulf Oil Spill And Energy Policy With Maddow (VIDEO)

"Welcome to the brutal world of the most important policy issue in the world that no one can stand to talk about for very long. What cause for optimism, concerning our next guest? At least he is a nerd, which does -- in this case -- seem like cause for hope."

Rachel Maddow was clearly excited to welcome Energy Secretary Steven Chu to her program on Monday night, kicking off her "Geek Week" with an eight-minute introduction of a man wielding a PhD and Nobel Prize. But his appearance was set against a disconcerting backdrop, as the Gulf oil spill continues to worsen not long after serious problems in both the coal and nuclear industries. Maddow cited nearly every president since the mid-70's as an advocate of swift action on energy policy, but also observed that little progress has been made. "Politicians love to talk tough about oil and energy," she said. "They also love to not rock the boat too much. And the boat, such as it is, floats on a sea of oil."

After an initial segment touching on broader energy issues, Maddow and Chu focused on the Gulf oil spill for the second segment. Maddow took issue with Chu's assertion that the administration has instituted a moratorium on new drilling offshore, pointing out that approvals seem to be moving forward. Chu suggested it could be a matter of interpretation.

While Maddow respected her guest's credentials, she also wasn't afraid to call him out when he seemed to duck a couple of her questions. After Chu twice suggested that he only knew what he learned from media reports, Maddow mused, "Mr. Secretary, I would say I'm worried that you only know what you read in the papers about what's being approved."

WATCH PART ONE: With a focus on renewable energy, energy dependence and nuclear power.

WATCH PART TWO: With a focus on BP and the Gulf oil disaster.

Comments

[rodea11]

11:51 AM on 05/31/2010

After watching Department of Energy Secretary Chu's interview on the Rachel Maddow show I believe it is time this administration considered whether he is the right man, both managerially and politically, for the job.

Does he just seem like he’s not really plugged in to what is going on, or does he really not know what his own organization is doing to stop the BP leak and make sure nothing like this happens again? You get the sense from listening to him that the situation is hopeless and out of his hands.

He has exhibited this same hopelessness when discussing hydrogen use as a storage medium for solar energy. Although this concept has a great deal of promise, particularly in non-mobile systems, he came out with a statement that it would take three miracles for hydrogen to be used in an energy storage system. That is the wrong message for the leader of an energy organization to be espousing, particularly when his mission is to transform this country’s energy source from fossil to renewable energy.

[Jayjaybe]

01:11 AM on 06/28/2010

Sec'y Chu is an experienced manager but he's also a scientist--and an appointee. He'll handle the politics differently than a politician who might have thoughts of future office, or even re-election. As a world-class scientist, support for science populism isn't what will you'll get from him. You may be prone to jumping on bandwagons, he won't be. Don't give yourself too much credit for your quasi-criticism of him; at best, it's a weak ploy.

[lvogt]

01:38 PM on 05/26/2010

Maddow mused, "Mr. Secretary, I would say I'm worried that you only know what you read in the papers about what's being approved."

She said that way to nicely. She should have seriously asked. "You're the Sec of Energy. Why is it that you only know what you read in the papers about what's being approved?" Then demand to know why he didn't have a better handle on what's going on.

[Manx]

03:04 AM on 05/26/2010

What Maddow didn't tell us is that Steven Chu received a $ 500 million grant from BP for research and that Chu picked a top BP scientist as his undersecretary, as reported in today's NY Times.

[imacmadman]

12:04 AM on 06/06/2010

Imagine that...

[johnsonc20]

12:48 AM on 05/26/2010

Maddow didn't let him get away with his vague comments about new and improved nuclear power. The plans just approved are for the same old plants - which will be 100% U.S. taxpayer funded, because Wall Street won't back nuclear power plants after spotty economic history during the 70s and 80s. Chu's faith in reprocessing and breeder reactors is frightening. Contrary to nuclear power mythology, they produce even larger, messier quantities of radioactive waste and have never been successful as power producers anywhere in the world, even in that paragon of the nuclear age, France. They also legitimize the commercial use of plutonium - making it all that more difficult to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation in the world.

[JePense]

07:01 AM on 05/26/2010

New and improved?

The government has just verified the radioactive contamination of southern New Jersey's largest underground drinking water supply by the steady leaking from the aging nuclear plant at Oyster Creek (near Toms River, NJ).

Locals fought against license renewal this past couple of years, but have been dismissed as cuckoos until now.

Even now, the newspaper reports that regulators say soothingly that the radioactive contamination is from a very slow leak and it will take a long time to saturate the entire water supply???

I was part of the NJ response team when Three Mile Island lost its safety record. We met in a secure underground facility for days while we assessed the potential for airborne contamination to drift across our farmlands, food and water supplies, schoolyards, wetlands etc.

[GreenPlanet]

12:04 AM on 05/26/2010

I am very disturbed that Maddow wasn't herself, she wasn't forceful in asking the tough question. There is no doubt that respect must be offered to a Nobel Prize Cell Biologist, Physicist, as respect should be offered to all guests, but she let him just cover up as he did blatantly for the Obama adminstration. He said he only learns massive happenings of the Obama Energy decisions by reading it in the paper. This is why everyone is frustrated, and Chu rambled on about why Obama is still granting oil drillling permits even when Obama himself implemented a moratorium. What the hell is going on here? Rachel, were you told by the white house that if they let you talk to Chu, that you have to be passive with him. I support you 100%, you are the best out there, but not sure what happened? You need to force Obama himself to come on now, and ask him the tough questions. I am a liberal totally upset with our wimpy Dems and Obama.

[johnsonc20]

12:43 AM on 05/26/2010

I hear you, but the problem she had with nailing Chu on that particular discrepancy is that well-drilling approval, literally, is not his department. He probably thought that the permits had been stopped himself, until he discovered otherwise (so may have President Obama). That particular snafu was brought to us courtesy of the Interior Department, not the Department of Energy.

[roger37]

12:56 AM on 05/26/2010

I'm of the same opinion as you regarding the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama most of all. But I disagree about Rachel's competence in this interview. She uncovered exactly the crux of the problem with Chu--he's not that involved.

He stupidly said, "All I know is what I read in the papers," and she promptly, but gently, kind of like my urologist, shoved it up his nether regions. She is the best journalist to come down the pike in many years, as I'm sure you agree.

[childeharr]

10:04 PM on 05/25/2010

Each time I watch Maddow, I wonder why is this lady so great? She, along with PBS (so what if it's boring), comprise the only news that I think is worth watching anymore. There's something "different" about Maddow. I know a lot of people like Keith Olbermann and I used to be Chris Matthews' single fan, but there's something different about this lady. Why is her show subjugated to a late night spot on MSNBC? Why isn't this woman on the national news? She seems to actually care about journalism and (wait for it!) accuracy in reporting. She is one of the few reporters on modern news that actually engages in actual research. She presents this research to her guest. And, yet, still treats guests with respectful reception, whether their views are concurrent with hers, or not. I ask again, WHY ISN'T THIS WOMAN ON THE NATIONAL NEWS? Can we please stop filling the ranks of the national news with popular veterans and start assigning it to those who report information responsibly? I know it sounds trite, but the public needs free national access to real reporters like Maddow immediately!

[GreenPlanet]

11:58 PM on 05/25/2010

It is my strong concurrance that Rachel Maddow should be national, but the national media is too designated to corporate interests. They would force Maddow to lighten up, and moderate things, just like you see everyone else do on the Sunday morning shows, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc. Remember when CNN's quack Doctor, Sanjay Gupta, was forced by the CNN's corporate owned health insurance industry sponsors, to go after Michael Moore's health care film, in that famous debate where Michael Moore embarassed Gupta on national TV, and called out Gupta on his fraudulent corporate induced behavior. Gupta and CNN were forced to apologize later. But yet Gupta is still working there? This is what we have on the mainstream media. They can't debate, are always have job guarantees, they never lose their jobs for being bad.

[fairplaystacy]

04:45 AM on 05/26/2010

This is news

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/25/headlines

[imacmadman]

12:14 AM on 06/06/2010

I'm afraid that if she were on national news, she wouldn't have enough of the audience that would appreciate her honesty since Fox has polarized the media to such extremes. I think she would also have trouble with corporate sponsors who would try to muzzle her.

Nonetheless, I admire her greatly and look forward to every opportunity to watch her show.

[Jim Pasterczyk]

09:22 PM on 05/25/2010

My guess would be that the regs regarding compulsory allowance of oil leases written during the Dubya debacle are still in place and just haven't been rewritten yet because there was so much else that had to be done to get the country back on the right track after the Wasted Eight. Even when they are rewritten there's going to be an extensive comment period no doubt followed by much litigation by the oil companies, i.e. the normal workings of government.

[Sergeant]

07:33 PM on 05/25/2010

I am just guessing that you could put a bunch of conservative and liberal huffpo bloggers around a table, order in meat for the conservatives and veggies for or vegan brothers, and figure out what resources we would need in terms of experts, materiel, or just information to get this started. I am also guessing that we would be wanting to do this before there was an oil rig disaster on the coast. That is called contingency planning by some, strategic planning by others. In fact some of these bloggers have done the butcher block paper drills to brainstorm ideas much less important than this. Maybe that was done. But what we know was done was we left it up to the polluters to come up with a fix. Maybe, in hindsight, that wasn't the brightest move.

[Fez]

07:33 PM on 05/25/2010

I have spoken with friends who work at Los Alamos National Lab, which is under Dr. Chu's authority. The Lab has sent several scientists down to the Gulf, one of whom has already been chewed out by Lab lawyers for sharing proprietary technology with BP. Sadly, this sort of disaster will require real scientists and engineers and not industry hacks to come up with a solution. There was no Plan B because it turns out there was no Plan A. And don't get me started on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who sounds half-bright and is clearly out of her depth, so to speak. As is Secretary Salazar. This one is going to take someone like the late Richard Feynman to come up with a novel solution.

[cly]

06:49 PM on 05/25/2010

I don't think she "grilled" him. She was very polite and just asked him some intelligent questions.

[houseafire]

08:54 PM on 05/25/2010

"...intelligent questions"

Ahh, there's the rub :)

[erinker]

10:17 PM on 05/25/2010

Dr. Maddow is always polite. But never easy.

[Jonni Rae]

05:56 PM on 05/25/2010

She was wrong, in my opinion, to call him out for not knowing the details of what the department of the interior is doing. Talk to Salazar, who obviously has dropped the ball here. Chu has been tasked with working on stopping the leak, and that is what he has been doing 24/7. He is not a politician, but a scientist. Or better yet, why not get Obama on, and ask him. She overreached, too excited about the Rand Paul scoop, I guess. Chu did not deserve that.

[erinker]

10:19 PM on 05/25/2010

I am sure she would LOVE to get Obama on and grill him about several things! Despite the Right's insistence to the contrary, Rachel is no Obama hawk.

[GreenPlanet]

12:10 AM on 05/26/2010

Chu is a central part of Obama's energy policy, and it doesn't matter how scientific he is. Politics do and will have impact on on Chu's abillity or inability to do things. It doees play a big role. Behind the scenes, they have to be team players. Chu has to balance his science with being resolute and determined to ensure proper things are being done. When you have a moratorium on stopping oil drilling, then continue to offer drilling permits, this effects everyone. Chu, with his energy influence and education, should speak up on this. He should realize, as the energy secretary, that BP has to be regulated and scientists have to take control. BP has kicked scientists out, so they can continue to spread lies.

[IsotelusMaximus]

05:54 PM on 05/25/2010

The Department of Energy is one of the least effective bureaucratic offices in America. It was formed by Carter for the sole purpose to get America off foreign oil. Obviously, this department who's 2010's budget was $39 Billion is ineffective.

Chu's responses last night were evidence that he has no knowledge of the permitting process; that he has no power, supplies and know-how to deal with disasters.

The DOE is definitely one office that I would cut if was Prez for a day. It has become another bloated bureaucracy that has failed at its original mission and a siphon of tax-dollars.

[chiara12]

08:57 PM on 05/25/2010

Does the DOE run the permitting process for oil drilling? I thought it was the DOI? If it is the DOI how much detail is the head of another department supposed to know about the processes that occur within the DOI?

[GreenPlanet]

12:15 AM on 05/26/2010

It is true that the Energy dept. has not been effective as it should have been, but that is mostly due to Corporate influence of big oil, and politicians being fraudulent. I think just with your code terminology, "another bloated bureacracy," you are conservateve leaning and probably hate all government entities, dept. of education, social security admin, CDC, US Postal System, Medicare. And you will definitely support big corporations to run this. We know where the failures are! And I am sure you don't want BP to be regulate. Why would you want bloated Government regulations.

[1windcatcher]

05:46 PM on 05/25/2010

Dr. Chu is a political appointee and a vassal of Big Oil. The Dept. of Energy is controlled by Big Oil and does not want any new advancement in renewable energy science. DOE has been blocking new advancements in renewable energy science by cutting off all public funding for independent scientist and inventors (last 10 years). DOE is a political entity that is subsevervient to Big Oil and the Multinational Corporations; their research and development is orientated to developing the corporate product line; not getting out of line with new renewable energy advancements .

[GreenPlanet]

12:18 AM on 05/26/2010

Unfortunately that is true, Obama and the GOP took big oil donations, and they have to abide by what BP tells them, and Chu has to be a team player and just go along with this. BP also was able to write their own regulations and tax policy. Do you know that BP didn't pay ANY Taxes last year. They had $0 taxes. Aw the lobbying/political corruption.

[KathyinCT]

05:00 PM on 05/25/2010

Maddow did, indeed, GRILL him. He was visibly uncomfortable.

SO where's Sarah Palin and all the GOP to defend him and call out Rachel for being mean, prejudiced, etc.

Silence . . . . is deafening.

[barnybilt]

04:22 PM on 05/25/2010

Not to question the smarts of Dr. Chu, but He is an example of very smart people in their feild that can be very dumb in others. Remember His answer was Gamma rays.
We just asume smart people know it all, but that is not likely to be true. I wouldn't want a nucear physicist to take out My appendix. I personally have seen people with multiple degree's in engineering that couldn't change a light bulb.
If You want to plug a pipe. One might be better off to consult a plumber than a physicist.
You see smart people figure that they have to come up with some fantasic solution to a problem to show how smart they are. Had the boy in the fable ran to get a physicist instead of sticking his finger in the hole in the dike all might have been lost.