The world expects Barack Obama to do more for the climate and the environment than George W. Bush. But can the next president of the United States deliver climate friendly energy and environment policies in the depths of a recession?
 | Picture Gallery (click on the image to start)Can Barack Obama become a climate savior? (Photo: Shutterstock) |
Will Barack Obama kick America’s addiction to oil and use renewables to protect what he calls a “planet in peril”? Will the next U.S. President commit his country to the battle against climate change?
His election manifesto created great expectations, but disappointments seem inevitable. Obama, who spoke against offshore drilling early in his campaign, later said he could accept it as a way to ease gas price pressure on average Americans and reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
So where does the President-elect really stand on climate change? The world needs answers, fast. In December 2009, President Obama will meet world leaders in Copenhagen to finalize a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. has not even ratified the Kyoto Protocol yet, but progress without a committed America is unthinkable.
President Obama could break that deadlock. “We need a global response to climate change that includes binding and enforceable commitments to reducing emissions, especially for those that emit the most: the United States, China, India, the European Union, and Russia,” he wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs.
The Apollo Project
America will play its part, the new president says, by adopting his ‘New Energy for America’ plan based on a number of ambitious goals:
- Cutting U.S. emissions to 1990 levels by 2020
- Reducing projected electricity use by 15 percent by 2020
- Sourcing 25 percent of U.S. electricity from renewables by 2025
- Raising vehicle fuel-efficiency by four percent annually
With these measures, Obama hopes to tackle both climate change and the recession, creating five million new jobs in an “Apollo project” to build an alternative energy economy.
 | Picture Gallery (click on the picture to start)A protester holds up a sign during a demonstration in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington in April 2007. See the climate change issues facing the United States (Photo: Reuters) |
These are tough targets, however. For instance, U.S. emissions were already 14 percent above 1990 levels in 2006. And in an economic recession U.S. carmakers are begging for bailouts not fuel-efficiency regulations.
Obama has admitted he may have to scale back his plans. “I'm not willing to give up the need to do it,” he said of the New Energy plan during the first presidential debate, “but there may be individual components of it that we can't do."
Fuel and energy efficiency
On the roads, Obama promises one million hybrid cars by 2015. Half of all government vehicles will be hybrids or all electric by 2012 and consumers will be rewarded for buying “advanced vehicles” with 7000 dollars in tax credits. To encourage the carmakers, federal aid to help pay their enormous healthcare obligations will be linked to investment in fuel-efficient vehicles.
Meanwhile, Obama’s National Low Carbon Fuel Standard would cut carbon emissions from vehicle fuels by 10 percent by 2020 and require all new cars to have flex-fuel capacity so they can run on a mixture of gasoline and biofuels.
Obama’s longstanding support for corn-based ethanol poses problems. U.S. ethanol is uncompetitive without government subsidies and inflates global food prices, according to the United Nations. Obama now emphasizes second-generation biofuels, calling for 60 billion gallons of “advanced biofuels” by 2030.
One glaring omission in Obama’s plans is his attitude to public transport, other than a short statement that he will “re-commit federal resources” to mass transit projects.
The New Energy plan promotes swingeing cuts in electricity consumption, mainly through improving energy efficiency in buildings and appliances. By 2030, all new buildings should be carbon neutral, says Obama, and he promises to make one million homes energy-efficient every year by funding improvements in insulation, windows and home heating.
Obama’s plans to hold down oil and gas prices through more drilling and releasing strategic oil reserves, however, could compromise his efforts to reduce U.S. emissions. He defends his strategy by promising that tax breaks currently enjoyed by oil companies would be revoked and the revenues redirected towards renewables. But no climate change plan can succeed, argues the Financial Times, “if oil and petrol stay as cheap as Americans think nature intended.”
Congress holds the key
Despite the great expectations, Obama cannot transform America alone. He needs Congress, the only authority that can pass domestic climate legislation and ratify international agreements. Ultimately, it was Congress that rejected Kyoto.
While his Democrat Party now dominates Congress, not all Democrats will support Obama’s plans. A Democrat senator from a rust-belt state may well oppose carbon caps on industry and this year in the Democrat-controlled Senate a proposed cap-and trade legislation—fundamental to Obama’s plans—collapsed.
One sign of Obama’s determination to pursue a green agenda would be if he, to overcome resistance to cap-and-trade, declared that CO2 emissions are a “danger to human welfare”. This declaration, mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court but fought tooth and nail by the Bush administration, would legally trigger environmental regulations under the Clean Air Act, forcing polluters to clean up.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: November 17, 2008
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my opinion about climate change
well, as a student, I am aware of the things that are happening in our planet nowadays. In my own point of view, a good leader must be a good example to his fellow men. What if the EARTH...