President Barack Obama met with a dozen environmental activists at the White House Friday. Obama meets with greens at W.H.

President Barack Obama met with a dozen environmental activists at the White House Friday as his energy agenda continues to come under fire from all sides.

Obama dropped in on a meeting between White House staffers and Energy Action Coalition activists in town for the Power Shift 2011 conference — a gathering of some 10,000 people, almost entirely college students, organizing to promote clean energy and the environment.


The discussion could be seen as an attempt to head off discontent on the left over the failure to pass a comprehensive climate change bill and Obama's embrace of offshore oil drilling, nuclear power and the use of "clean coal" technology.

Power Shift is organizing a Monday protest in front of the White House.

Courtney Hight, co-director of the Energy Action Coalition and a former White House Council on Environmental Quality staffer, said the group is happy the White House and congressional Democrats were able to stop GOP attempts to block greenhouse gas regulations in the budget bill.

"We are thankful he fought to save the Clean Air Act," Hight said in a statement. "That's the man we elected, and we need him to stand strong and stand up to big polluters and safeguard America's public health."

Hight has been less kind to the president in the media, however. At the meeting, Obama defended his stance promoting nuclear power, CNN reported.

"We made it clear we don't support nuclear," Hight said. "The president said it's something he's going to continue to support, so we have a difference of opinion on that."

White House spokesman Clark Stevens said Obama "appreciated the opportunity to discuss the administration's record on clean energy as well as his ongoing focus to build a 21st Century clean energy economy with Power Shift leadership."

Former Vice President Al Gore opened the Power Shift conference Friday night with speech that avoided directly criticizing the Obama administration. Instead, Gore took aim at the fossil fuel lobby.

“It’s true that governments, by and large, have been politically paralyzed because the energy companies — the coal companies, the oil companies, the coal-burning utilities — they have spent enormous amounts of money and they have succeeded in many countries in paralyzing the political process,” Gore said, citing a statistic that there are four “anti-climate” lobbyists per lawmaker in Washington.

"But at the same time governments have been paralyzed, we are seeing at the grassroots level a fantastic growing movement, and we’re also seeing some responses with renewable energy and conservation.”

To that end, Gore plugged wind, solar — which he said is “just a couple of years away” from being competitive on the national electric grid — and energy efficiency.

Gore also took a shot at climate skeptics, launching into a litany of ecological indicators and natural disasters: heat waves and fires in Russia; drought in the American southwest; floods in Pakistan and Australia; the fact that 2010 tied for the hottest year ever recorded.

“Are we supposed to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this is not real?” Gore asked. “You can’t negotiate with the laws of physics. You can’t amend the laws of physics. You’ve got to respond to reality.”

EPA chief Lisa Jackson is scheduled to address the Power Shift conference this evening.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 10:17 a.m. on April 16, 2011.