Barack Obama speaking in Germany back in July, photo: matt4077.

At numerous times during his campaign, Barack Obama indicated that he would take a more collaborative, reengaged approach in dealing with other nations on major issues. And though he’ll still be president-elect Obama for close to three months, that hasn’t stopped politicians in other nations from reaching out to him, offering suggestions.

Canada Would Consider Climate Pact With US
Though Barack Obama’s proposed emission cuts are deeper than those currently proposed in Canada, and he’s indicat…

Continue reading " Canada, Germany Want to Work With Obama on Climate Change "

By Kate Sheppard

There’s a growing push in Washington for a green economic-stimulus package, and enviros have reason to hope President-elect Barack Obama will lead the charge.

“Finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There’s no better driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy,” Obama told Time’s Joe Klein in an interview two weeks ago. “That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office, assuming obviously that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation.”

Obama adviser Dan Kammen said this week that the Obama team may conduct a nationwide “listening tour” on energy and environmental issues in the next couple of months, in an effort to build support for its legislative plans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), at a press conference on Wednesday, talked up the need for a stimulus package that includes green elements, ideally before Obama even takes office. “Central to the job-creation issue is the strong piece for rebuilding the infrastructure of America, again, in a way that reduces our dependence on foreign oil and that creates good green jobs in America. That is the first order of business that we will have, if it appears to have an opportunity, then we will have a lame-duck session to take it up.”

At a post-election press conference on Wednesday, leaders of major environmental groups also stressed the importance of an economic-stimulus package that includes green measures like home-weatherization funding, efficiency incentives, and aid for the auto industry make more efficient vehicles. That could be low-hanging fruit for creating new jobs and curbing energy use and emissions, they said.

“It’s about connecting the dots between energy, the environment, and the economy, and President Obama made that clear,” said Sierra Club Political Director Cathy Duvall. “It will help our economy recover, and it will also help our environment recover.”

“If there’s going to be a new economic stimulus package, clean energy should be cornerstone,” said Anna Aurilio of Environment America. “We think solving the economic crisis is going to be predicated on how well we launch the clean-energy economy.”

“The biggest solution is a new energy future,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “We’re pleased to be able to work with a new president who gets it on these issues.”

At an Environmental Law Institute event on Wednesday, policy wonks and a senior adviser to Republican Sen. Dick Lugar (Ind.) voiced similar sentiments.

The event’s moderator, Brookings Institution fellow David Sandalow (who was also an energy and environmental adviser to Obama’s campaign), noted that Obama will take leadership at “a period of historic opportunity and historic constraints.” The panelists agreed that the key to passing new energy and environmental legislation will be using it to spur economic growth — through building efficiency, mass transit, and infrastructure development.

“He has to sell it as an economic opportunity, and has to show sustained presidential leadership,” said Mark Helmke, who advises Lugar on these issues. “What he does on this issue from the bully pulpit will make light years of difference … It depends on how much President Obama uses his vaunted position to put heat on this topic.”

Green economic stimulus seems likely to be the earliest environmental progress we could see in the next year — if Obama and the new Congress can push it through.

“[Obama] understands the gravity of the problems we face, and we expect him to act,” said Sierra Club’s Duvall. “We expect to work with him on investing in clean energy and new jobs.”

Continue reading " Let’s get this green economy rolling "

By Kate Sheppard

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) has accepted Barack Obama’s offer to serve as his chief of staff. As chair of the Democratic Caucus, Emanuel is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House. Before his election to the House in 2003, he was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.

The chief of staff is essentially charged with implementing the president’s agenda, and, appropriately, Emanuel has a reputation for getting things done. Many credit him with major Democratic pick-ups in the House in 2006, when he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Some in D.C. call him “Rahmbo” — which could be an insult or a term of endearment, depending on who’s saying it.

Emanuel has a respectable environmental record. In his time in the House, he’s earned a 90 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, and a 94 percent in the 110th Congress. He was a cosponsor of the 2007 energy bill, which included increased efficiency standards for automobiles and appliances. He also cosponsored a failed resolution calling for 25 percent of the country’s energy to come from renewable, domestic sources by 2025.

In 2006, he introduced the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Implementation Act to fund programs to protect and restore the Great Lakes, and in 2007 he sponsored a resolution calling for protection of the Great Lakes from dumping of industrial waste.

Earlier this year he sponsored legislation to spur production of natural-gas vehicles and provide tax incentives for natural-gas vehicle infrastructure, and another bill to increase tax credits for certain alternative vehicles produced in the U.S.

Of course, the chief of staff is charged with pushing the president’s agenda, not one’s own. But Emanuel seems to have a solid background for pursuing Obama’s energy and environment plans.

Continue reading " Transition talk: Free to Rahm "

By David Roberts

Clean energy investor John Doerr advises Barack Obama to hire Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, as the nation’s first chief technology officer (a position Obama has said he’ll create). Doerr also says “the most important thing [Obama]’s got to do is kick-start a huge amount of research and innovation in energy.”

Here’s Bill Joy on renewables:

Who do you think should be the country’s CTO?

Continue reading " CTO of the U.S. "

By David Roberts

The funny thing about this picture is that it looks completely fake, like I’m posing next to a cardboard cutout. The light bouncing off the mirror does funky things. (PS, when posing for a picture with future presidents, always place yourself in front of a gigantic mirror.) The photo was taken after this interview from March 2006. In the intro I wrote:

The weight of much hope and expectation rests on the narrow shoulders of Barack Obama, the first-term Democratic senator from Illinois.

His eventual presidential run is seen as inevitable (some pundits even hype a 2008 bid).

Some pundits indeed.

Continue reading " Me and the President-elect "

By David Roberts

In March 2007, Democratic primary contender John Edwards released an ambitious climate and energy plan, calling for greenhouse gas reductions of 80 percent by 2050, a cap-and-trade program with auctioned permits, and a ban on conventional dirty coal plants.

At that point in the race, conventional wisdom was that Edwards was trying to stake out the left and Hillary was going for the center — leaving Obama either nowhere to go, if you saw it like your average corpulent Democratic consultant, or free to maneuver, if you saw it like Obama. After Edwards released his plan, the obvious political move for a guy with his eye on the general election would have been for Obama to put out a somewhat more conservative version, to polish his centrist bona fides.

He didn’t, though. His plan, released in October, was more detailed and politically astute than Edwards’, but every bit as visionary. It proposes a declining carbon cap with fully auctioned permits, massive investments in energy research, job training, infrastructure, and efficiency, a renewable portfolio standard, a low-carbon fuel standard, higher fuel economy standards, and so on and on, in great detail. It is marred by its lavish support for biofuels and "clean coal," but that is a minor flaw in light of the historic changes it would spark if fully implemented.

Will it be fully implemented? In trying to figure out what Obama will do, it’s helpful to contemplate how he navigated the campaign itself.

The overall campaign strategy was to play the long game, to proceed steadily toward big targets and not get flustered or distracted by the day-to-day news cycle. No-drama Obama.

After the primary was over (and gas prices spiked, and a financial crisis struck), Obama did what polling indicated: he played down the parts of his plan that threaten to raise energy prices and played up investments in clean technology and green jobs. It’s a message that resonates across ideological and institutional lines. He was careful never to take sides in ecumenical energy debates: Nuclear is fine, if safe. Coal is fine, if the carbon is sequestered. Liquid coal is fine if it comes out of a low-carbon lifecycle. Offshore drilling is fine in exchange for serious support for renewables. What matters is not this or that energy source but the outcome, a cleaner economy.

This strategy allowed Obama to sound supportive of extractive and energy-intensive industries clustered in swing states while campaigning on an agenda that would utterly transform them. It allowed him the rhetorical space to refashion clean energy as a bread-and-butter jobs issue. It protected him from attacks on his right flank.

He never backed off his original proposals, though. The very day before the election he got attacked for telling the truth to a San Francisco newspaper. In the end, he was elected with a clear mandate for clean energy.

Now everyone wants to know what he’ll do. It’s seems reasonable to expect that he’ll stick with what seems to be his instinctive strategy: focus on the long game.

What’s that mean? For the Obama presidency, there are three biggies:

1. Get out of Iraq.
2. Do something about energy and carbon.
3. Pass healthcare reform.

Based on precedent it’s likely he’d be willing to negotiate or horse trade just about anything else in favor of tackling these three issues.

Now, how does that same strategy translate to climate/energy? The biggies in this area are:

1. A declining cap on carbon — the linchpin.
2. Large investments in green R&D and infrastructure.
3. Regulatory and tax support for clean electricity and alternative fuels.

The first two shape the foundation of the market and the third accelerates new industries within it.

Along the way, there are certain to be environmentalist-irritating concessions. There will be research and pilot-project funding for "clean coal," oil shale, and liquid coal. Ethanol subsidies are unlikely to be substantially curtailed. There will likely be more oil drilling. Horses will be traded.

The key is the long game. Obama worked carefully, diligently, and adeptly to get elected on a clean energy agenda. Despite the many reasons he gave greens to recoil along the way, he got there. There is every reason to believe he will now work carefully, diligently, and adeptly to get clean energy flowing to the country. That is in his best interest and the country’s.

Greens are deeply accustomed to believing that politicians are humoring them and will abandon their concerns at the first sign of lobbying. It’s not an unfounded fear, but it occasionally gives them the tone of jealous, paranoid lovers, flipping out over every perceived slight. Sometimes, though, what looks like a Sign He Doesn’t Really Mean It from one angle looks like long-term strategic thinking from another. Throughout the campaign Obama has repeatedly shown that his critics miss the difference. Perhaps, at least for a short while, Obama has earned the presumption of good faith.

Continue reading " Strategery 2.0 "

While Barack Obama had a lot of success spreading his message virally on the Web before he was elected president, his victory speech is on its way to becoming one of the fastest-spreading viral videos of all time. The official campaign version of the video on YouTube (embedded below) alone has been watched 1.9 million times in the past two days. But more than 500 different versions and clips of the speech have spread across the Web and been watched more than 6.8 million times.

According to Visible Measures, which tracks video views across YouTube and more than 150 other video-sharing sites, by 11 AM ET on November 5, there were 100 versions of the video that had been watched 620,000 times. By 5:30 PM, the number had grown to 2.2 million views across 160 different videos. By 11:30 PM, it was 4.9 million views across 250 videos. Finally, at 9:30 AM this morning it was 6.8 million views across 500 videos. (I’ve charted these numbers above. They do not include any livestreams or views on the sites of the broadcast networks except for NBC.com, so this is just a subset of the total views of the speech).

Continue reading " How To Make Your Video Go Viral: Become President "

By Andrew Sharpless

In its feature “Stocking the Cabinet,” Grist speculated on Barack Obama’s potential nominees for the “top environmental jobs” in his administration.

For the oceans, however, the most pertinent post isn’t the head of the EPA, or the secretary of agriculture, energy, or interior, all of which were included in Grist’s guessing game. Guess what is?

Hint: The position is currently filled by a man who made his fortune selling Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes.

Give up?

It’s the Secretary of Commerce, a post now held by Carlos Gutierrez, late of Kellogg. His background as a business executive may have led Gutierrez to believe that being Secretary of Commerce was about, you know, commerce.

Surprise: The Department of Commerce’s top duty is running U.S. fisheries. NOAA accounts for 60 percent of the department’s budget and one-third of its staff. And it’s NOAA that oversees all fishing within 200 nautical miles of our coastline.

Nothing in Secretary Gutierrez’s resume suggested he was eminently qualified to steward our oceans. (And the very fact that fisheries are grouped under Commerce is a strong indicator of how we view them as businesses rather than ecosystems.)

So how’d he go from green-lighting new cereal flavors to deciding the fates of our groupers, codfish, and tunas, as well as the sharks, dolphins, and sea turtles accidentally killed by fishing gear? By being a prominent businessperson and donor.

Not surprisingly, Gutierrez has shown little interest in marine conservation during his tenure, somehow failing to find the time even to meet with conservation groups. Lately he has pushed to open industrial fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico even though Congress hasn’t yet approved any offshore aquaculture in U.S. waters. 

Fortunately for wild fish populations, the vote on the Gulf of Mexico fish farms has been delayed until January, when we’ll have a new Secretary of Commerce.

So who will it be?

Gutierrez’s predecessor, Donald Evans, was George W. Bush’s national finance chair during the 2000 campaign (and equally mismatched to a job that oversees fishing). I have my doubts that President-elect Obama will break from the tradition of granting Commerce to a loyal, financially-minded business person and fundraiser. So here’s my pick: Obama’s campaign finance chair, Penny Pritzker.

Pritzker is an executive at Hyatt and gets name-checked annually on Forbes’ list of wealthiest Americans. She has overseen Obama’s record-shattering fundraising efforts and certainly has an able financial and business brain.

Would she take to the Secretary’s chair like the proverbial fish to water? I can’t speculate, but one can certainly hope. Conservationists must not overlook this appointment. The health and vitality of the oceans depends upon it.

Continue reading " Like a fish out of water "

Like many of my fellow citizens, one of my first thoughts after hearing Sen. Barack Obama declared the winner of Tuesday’s election was “I am so proud to be an American.”

Yes, my guy won. Yes, the United States elected it’s first African-American president (and that’s an incredible step forward). Yes, the issues that matter to me (and likely to you) will receive much more attention than they have over the past eight years. All of these are reasons to celebrate.

But, even more important, and more critical to our near- and long-term future: hope won.

While that sounds like a nice, abstract, feel-good statement, I don’t think we can underestimate the notion that Tuesday’s election came down to a choice between hope and fear. Let’s face it: the choice of Obama to lead the country for the next four years was risky. He proved his intelligence, eloquence and resolve during the campaign, but he’s still a relative newcomer to the national stage. He faces Herculean challenges upon entering office: a financial and economic mess, two wars, and, yes, monumental environmental threats… to name a few of the most pressing issues. And, of course, he has critics ready to pounce hard on the slightest perceived misstep.

Americans knew these things as they entered the voting booths on Tuesday… and yet the majority still chose Senator Obama over the much better-known Senator McCain. And while we can parse decisions and actions made by each candidate and his representatives, I really want to believe that what Americans voted for wasn’t simply a man, a party, or a governing ideology, but rather the spirit embodied in the exclamation “Yes we can.”

Read more of this story »

Continue reading " Building Bridges: Hope is Renewable "

Newsweek has released a new, intriguing article in their “Secrets of the 2008 Campaign” series.

Among the juicy tidbits is a pre-debate quote from Barack Obama about the challenge of solving environmental problems.

The package of secret tales includes stories about how both campaigns had their computer systems hacked, how Sarah Palin walked into a briefing in only a towel, and also has some worrisome anecdotes about increased threats of violence against the Obama family.

It would be folly to try to explain the context of the quote about going green from Obama myself, so here is the Newsweek segment verbatim:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

To read Newsweek’s article that is full of great conversation fodder, click here.

Photo Credit: Obama Biden Campaign Website

Continue reading " A Funny, Humanizing Global Warming Quote from Barack Obama "