The Obama campaign has released their energy and global warming plan. Serious and innovative? Same old? Enough of an emphasis on green collar jobs? Too much money to coal and/or nuclear? You decide (comment away).
About Jamie
Jamie is the co-coordinator of 350.org, an international global warming campaign. A recent college graduate, he lives in San Francisco, CA. In 2007, he co-organized Step It Up, a campaign that pulled together over 2,000 climate rallies across the United States to push for strong climate action at the federal level. He's also an early member of the youth climate movement, leading one of Energy Action's first campaigns in 2005: Road to Detroit, a nationwide veggie-oil bus tour to promote sustainable transportation. He's traveled to Montreal and Bali to lobby the UN with youth, but he's a strong believer that change happens in the streets not in meetings. Jamie received the Morris K. Udall award in 2007 and has been recognized by the mighty state of Vermont for his work on climate change. You can also find him blogging at Campus Progress' "Pushback," Changents.com, and 350.org.
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While I am glad to see a comphrehensive energy plan, I do have to say that the focus on “clean” coal, nuclear and E85 are all very problematic obstacles in Obama’s plan for a clean energy future. On the positive side, his emphasis on energy conservation and efficiency is quite promising.
He doesn’t strike me as a visionary leader on energy issues however, as he has few original ideas.
First of all, we don’t need ANY of the fossil fuels and we don’t need nuclear energy. We also don’t need ANY of the biofuels, especially cord-based ethanol. We can supply the world with the energy of the sun. The “variability” argument against renewables will soon disappear. Photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, hydro, and geothermal are enough for us. We need to totally stop burning stuff. Obama doesn’t get that part, nor do any of the other candidates.
On the spending side, why only $150 billion over 10 years. Our president asked more than that for the Iraq war. We don’t care to spend $100 billion to kill thousands of people, cause chaos, and waste time, but we restrict ourselves in spending enough when it comes to the biggest threat to society. We need to be spending $150 billion every year on fighting global warming until the world is climate neutral.
Cap-and-trade, the plan says, ensures that the targets are met. Apparently, the Obama team doesn’t understand what happens in a market. If you tax CO2, you can predict by how much emissions will fall. For example, if you put a price of $1000/ton of CO2, every single fossil fuel plant and petroleum provider would close down over night. We’d be in trouble, of course. If you put a tax of $1/ton, fossil fuel providers will laugh. So, we can set a tax that gives investors lower risk in choosing renewables over fossil fuels. Cap-and-trade will be burdensome and full of loopholes.
From what I’ve seen in these candidates, we’ll have to continue fighting after the Dems win in 2009 to make sure a global treaty will get the job done.
I agree with Amy’s point about Obama not seeming like an especially visionary leader with this plan.
Obviously the specific policies are important when looking at a plan, but I’m also hoping to see passion, good messaging, an innovative approach, and a personal touch – I feel like those are the things that demonstrate commitment as much as what your environmental policy people wrote for you.
Obama has been pushing “clean coal” since he got in the Senate. The fact that he has been pushing “clean coal” for so long tells me that he is not really in tune with the severity of the global warming crisis, and is more concerned with keeping his constituents and others in the coal industry happy. I agree with Carlos, we don’t need clean coal! Investing in clean coal will only perpetuate the problem.
I would have liked to see a lot more emphasis on green jobs, although the “energy-focused youth jobs” program sounds interesting.
Can an ecological vision even come from a politician?
the model of a person at the top “managing” does not work for our relationships in the environment, so why ought it work in our politics?
i have nothing to really offer except questions.
In the interest of full disclosure, let me just put out there that I’m an Obama supporter.
I’d urge you all to check out this article at Grist that gives one reaction that sums up the plan pretty well:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/8/13403/3579
I’m a bit surprised by the lukewarm reactions here (albeit four comments does not an adequate sampling make). I was pretty impressed with how aggressive his agenda is, as have been many others who know a lot more than I do:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/-/HQpress/Statements%20of%20Support%20Energy%20Speech%20100807%20FINAL.pdf
Lastly, for those who care to check out the full plan, please go here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/-/HQpress/100707%20Fact%20Sheet%20Energy%20Speech%20FINAL.pdf
This is a serious commitment of resources and use of the presidential agenda setting to push for major change in our environmental and energy policies. It’s easy to say that any plan shouldn’t include any coal or nuclear. It’s easy to say that we should invest $1.2 trillion in renewables instead of in Iraq. It’s easy to say a carbon tax is more efficient (but, mind you, a carbon tax doesn’t guarantee a hard cap on total atmospheric concentrations of CO2 equivalents.) I’m sure President Giuliani/Romney/Huckabee/Thompson would personally thank the Democratic competitor for such a politically untenable plan on day 1 of his administration as he begins looking for environmentally sensitive areas to drill for more oil.
Obama’s plan attacks the issue of climate change with the appropriate sense of urgency and articulates a reasonable and politically viable path to get us on track. We can’t have eight more years of lip service from Republicans or less environmentally-focused Democrats.
As just one example from the 11 page plan, his investments in the Smart Grid system will make intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar more viable (and accommodate larger portions), cutting a path toward massive increases in clean energy production.
Give the Grist article and the plan a read. I think you’ll like what you see.
Charlie
I think Obama’s plan at least recognizes the current realities. 80% of our electricity is generated by fossil and nuclear. Also, it is very difficult to get new transmission lines sited and built due to local opposition. The public acceptance facet needs greater attention. Otherwise, nothing, nuclear or solar, will be built.
Is it good enough? No.
But the thing I like about this is that Obama isn’t an environmentalist. He’s actually pretty ambivalent about these issues, and its been reflected in his campaign so far. What’s important is how he has been able to capture a lot of the good language and policy that’s out there – the right numbers, the investment in jobs (although not ‘pathways out of poverty’), the efficiency arguments.
What I also like is how he can appeal to Americans in the political middle. If someone was undecided about climate change, Al Gore running for president won’t change their mind. But when they see a candidate like Obama who previously has not prioritized this as an issue make a change, acknowledge the threat, then they will be more likely to identify with some new shift in urgency as reflected in a leader.
Its not visionary, but leadership can also be just getting the right people in the room.
So even if its not good enough, why do I like this? Because there won’t be a candidate who’s policy is good enough. In fact, we need to start realizing that the next president is going to enact a climate policy that is half as good as we need. I’m not despairing, but pointing out how politics work. That’s when our movement really needs to be committed and strategic. The months after January 2009 will be much more important than the months leading up to the election.
Charlie, I guess I would say that a vision for the future that involves coal is doomed from the start. Like Chrissy said, Obama has talked about “Clean Coal” for a while and at one point supported Coal-To-Liquids. That kind of attitude obviously doesn’t realize a whole understanding of the issue which isn’t just about carbon and cutting greenhouse gases, it’s about examining the whole way we live in the world and participate in the ecosystem. Mountain Top Removal illustrates quite clearly how the fossil fuel economy is out of alignment with the lifesystems of Earth… coal has to go.
What an excellent discussion. I really appreciate the threads about how Obama’s plan is admittedly faulty but that it’s the most realistic one we can expect to do anything given our present political situation.
I guess the thing that strikes me is this: we are in a state of Global Emergency. Any plan that thinks to cut a fraction of emissions by 2050 is simply going to kill us all. The ice caps are melting, and historically scientists have been horrible about giving us an accurate timeline for these things, always overstating our timeline. And the timeline we’re given now, by those who are unbiased, is less than 10 years away. This means to me that we’re likely going to see disasters in the next few years (and the fact is we already have seen many disasters of flood in Bengal, Indonesia, not to mention the twister in Kentucky this past year and the painful Katrina incident).
There’s a unilateral denial of this emergency in our media and an uncanny tendency of the average person to deny the fact of this emergency in order to feel safe in the present situation. What we need, and I hate to say it but I really see it as inevitable, is a revolution. If the political process is owned by an elite group bent on distorting the facts that concern the survival of every human on the planet, I don’t see what other option there is than to refuse to buy in to that system. Sorry to Obama, he may be doing the best he can in a broken system, but if the best still means we’re all going to die, what good is it to say that we should vote for the lesser of all evils?
There are some home-grown internet efforts to reclaim the political process for the common person, and I think our best hope lies in that. Flood the internet waves with a last pitch for survival, because the airwaves are owned and corrupted by forces bent on universal destruction. The clearest discussion I have yet to ever see on this matter with our present system is when the democratic candidates debated bloggers.