by Frank Holmes, reporter
Former President Barack Obama prided himself on being the most rabid environmentalist president in U.S. history. He regularly told Americans they had to deny themselves things they love—like their reliance on fossil fuels—to keep the earth from overheating.
Well, that was then, this is now.
While Obama still believes the rest of America needs to reduce its energy use, he just expanded his own carbon footprint.
When he’s not taking private jet flights around the world, the former president has decided to heat his mansion in elite Martha’s Vineyard with an enormous vat of propane.
An “underground propane installment was approved at the 79 Turkeyland Cove Road address,” the local government board in Edgartown, Massachusetts, told the conservative website The Daily Caller, which broke the story nationally.
In fact, Barack and Michelle Obama did not add one underground tank to their compound: They hooked up three propane tanks on the property.
Global warming is so extreme that the former first family needs 2,500 gallons of propane at a time to keep their New England residence toasty warm all year-round.
Due to the prodigious size of their mansion, they installed a whole new heating system, “which was broken into two 1,000 gallon tanks and one 500 gallon tank.”
The request, coming from the foremost spokesperson of “renewable energy,” would be surprising enough. It even took local government officials aback.
“We’ve never had a private propane tank come to us” for approval in the history of Martha’s Vineyard government services, select board member Arthur Smadbeck told a local website. Another select board member, Michael Donaroma, also noted that “a private-residence propane tank is typically a fraction of the quantity being requested,” that source reported.
It may be a first, but then, the Obamas’ private residence isn’t like most residences: The Obama clan enjoyed renting the property on Edgartown Great Pond so much that they bought it in late 2019.
The purchase showed they would accept nothing but the best.
They bought an 29-acre estate complete with a 6,900-square-foot, 7-bedroom, 8.5-bedroom mansion that cost the Obama family a mere $11.75 million.
Of course, the home comes with every amenity: access to a private beach, vaulted ceilings, a chef’s kitchen, stone fireplaces, “a screened porch, a garden, a stone patio, a pool with a hot tub and an outdoor shower,” according to the New York Post.
A courtly home that size demands adequate energy supplies to keep its occasional inhabitants warm. Besides, the Obamas need to keep up appearances on special occasions—like when they invited 475 guests to celebrate the ex-prez’s 60th birthday last summer, amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
No one should be upset over the Obamas’ birthday beach bash while everyone else had to follow strict social distancing rules, because the people who partied there were “a sophisticated, vaccinated crowd,” according to Annie Karni, White House correspondent for the New York Times.
A crew like that has to stay comfortable, too.
The average American would have a hard time filling propane tank that large. Like every other form of energy during the Biden administration, the cost of propane has been driven up—rising by 54 percent, according to statistics supplied by the government.
But the Obama family has done well financially, scoring multimillion-dollar Netflix deals, book deals, and other ventures and pay-offs since moving out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Within two years of leaving the East Wing, the Obamas had increased their total wealth 30 times over—that’s 3,000 percent.
“From the time he joined the US Senate in 2005 to the end of his presidency, Obama made $US20 million alone from his presidential salary, book royalties, and investments,” according to the Financial Review.
Today, the 44th president is worth an estimated $70 million. On a chilly day, he can afford to turn the thermostat up to 72 if he wants.
Some wonder about the environmentalist president installing three enormous propane wells, considering his eight-year-long messaging that Americans had to give up fossil fuels. But the fact that he bought a mansion on the Atlantic Ocean after spending almost a decade telling Americans that global warming would cause the oceans to rise—drowning everyone on the shoreline—should have been their first tip that the Obamas might not buy their own rhetoric; they buy mansions instead.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”