Obama is being pressured from every side right now to undue the harm inflicted by the Bush Administration and to take quick, powerful measures to move us forward to green economy.
Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program said, "The world’s leading economy… has moved from being a brake on progressive policy-making to potentially becoming a locomotive."
7 of the 12 congresspersons dubbed, the "Dirty Dozen," were ousted in US Congressional races. However, last Friday House Republicans released a little-noticed report outlining their priorities on future climate change.
It said, "Any energy policy that does not address all facets of energy production is a failure and threatens our economy." They promised to fight any national cap-and-trade plan that threatens coal production.
As you may have heard on the news, Obama plans to quickly reverse a number of deleterious Bush Executive orders. One order denied California the authority to regulate CO2 emissions from automobiles. California asked for EPA’s permission to require a 30% cut in emissions between 2009-2016, which would effectively mandate cars achieve 36 mpg. 17 other states planned to follow suit, representing 45% of the U.S. car market.
"Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said.
Obama also plans to reverse the executive order to open 360,000 acres of sensitive public lands in Utah for drilling. Bush plans to open 241 leases for oil and gas drilling. He plans to re-instate the process – born under President Clinton and killed by the Bush administration – that gives Wilderness Study Area protection to lands identified by the BLM as having wilderness character.
Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council said, "The election of Barack Obama represents a new day for environmentalists. His election brings an end to eight years of unrelenting assaults on the environment."
It will be hard to keep up, because Bush is pushing through more rules in his last days. He’s been rushing to de-regulate mountaintop removal coal mining, power plant emissions and important endangered species listings, which would decimate wolf populations as well as others.
What are Green NGOs asking for? Top of the list is a Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, a national cap-and-trade system, a long-term extension of the renewable energy production tax credit, and a process that facilitates investment in transmission lines so clean energy can be tapped.
High on the list is for the EPA to accurately account for biofuel emissions when implementing the new renewable fuel standard.
In last year’s energy bill, Congress explicitly required the EPA to accurately measure global warming emissions from renewable fuels based on their entire lifecycle, from cultivation to fuel production to vehicle exhaust. However, industry trade groups and others are pressuring EPA to omit or delay accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from land use change, such as tropical deforestation, tied to expanding biofuels production.
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