Environmentalists in general have been impressed by the speed and sheer sweep of Obama's efforts to leave behind the George Bush era of climate change denial
Barack Obama's $787bn economic recovery plan contained historic levels of green investment.
Barack Obama promised on his very first day in the White House to help move America towards a new green future. Now, 100 days on, environmentalists in general have been impressed by the speed and sheer sweep of Obama's efforts to leave behind the George Bush era of climate change denial, and try to set in place the foundations of a low carbon future.
So how has he performed? Obama, of course, has not had time to put in place the long-term measures needed to wean America off oil and coal. His administration has also had to scale back some of its ambitions because of opposition from Congress, charged with passing cap and trade legislation, and an American public that – unlike Obama – has yet to see global warming as a priority threat.
The Senate has yet to take up climate change legislation, which sharply reduces the chances of introducing a market-based cap and trade system by the end of this year. The administration has also frustrated some environmentalists.
But most agree that Obama has moved faster, and acted across a wider, than any other president to lay the foundations of a new low-carbon economy.
Here are some of the highlights of the last 100 days:
January 20: Only hours after Obama takes the oath of office, the White House issues a memo staying a number of Bush's "midnight regulations". The regulations, issued in the final hours of the Bush administration, had sought to do away with a generation of environmental protections imposed on polluters from factory farms to the burning of hazardous waste and oil shales development. Obama orders a review of the measures, which had been deplored by conservationists.
January 26: The president signs a pair of executive orders intended to set stricter limits on car exhaust emissions. Obama directs the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal, under George Bush, to allow California to cut car exhaust by 30%. The president also calls on the Transportation Department to draw up new fuel 35 MPG fuel standard for all cars rolling off the assembly lines from 2012.
February 17: Obama signs a $787bn economic recovery plan. The rescue package contained historic levels of green investment – well over $100bn by some estimates. There were billions for refitting existing buildings to make them more energy efficiency, high-speed rail lines and commuter transit and updating the electric grid.
"In a lot of respects the stimulus package was a gigantic climate and energy bill by itself in a very positive way," said David Gardiner, a senior adviser at the Energy Future Coalition. "We have never had a president who has focused on this ... with [that] intensity."
March 19: He pledges $2.4bn for the development of hybrid cars and advanced batteries.
March 20: Michelle Obama digs up a patch of ground behind the White House to plant the first presidential vegetable garden since the second world war. The Obamas plan to put in lettuce, spinach, herbs such as coriander, and hot peppers – but no beets because the president does not like them.
March 30: Obama sets aside 2m acres of public land spread across nine states as wilderness, from California's Sierra Nevada to Virginia's Jefferson forest, shielding it from mining, logging and other operations. Another provision protects 1,000 miles of river.
April 17: The Environmental Protection Agency formally declares that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare. The so-called endangerment finding is a first step towards regulating coal-fired power plants and to forcing US car manufacturers to make cleaner and more fuel-efficient vehicles.
April 27: The US hosts a two-day forum for 17 of the world's most polluting economies to try to get closer to a deal before the international climate change summit at Copenhagen in December. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, declares the US, after eight years of going missing under George Bush, is now committed to helping lead the world towards a planet-saving deal. She also makes a direct pitch to India and China, saying that a move towards a greener economy will not hold back development, but could help them reach greater prosperity.
Source - The Guardian
Showing posts with label environmentalists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmentalists. Show all posts
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Friday, 6 February 2009
Obama surges ahead in the race to be green
The green race is on. Did you notice? Barack Obama fired the starting gun a week ago, but most Europeans were looking the other way. Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, is on the track, but has no one to hand his baton to - his colleagues in the Government are off expanding Heathrow and coal power. Coming up behind him are people who saw dollar signs flashing in President Obama's strident words about oil last week.
Going low-carbon is no longer a seminar subject for caring greens. It's a real live competition to beat the oil regimes and make profits, in which the new environmentalists will be alpha males.
The President's speech was astonishing. “America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said, on his sixth day in office. The US would no longer “bankroll dictators” but would create its own energy from the Sun, wind and soil. Unchecked climate change would lead to “violent conflict, terrible storms and irreversible catastrophe”. It was wrong to deny the science, he said. It was wrong to think that clean energy would damage prosperity. This was not the lukewarm language of appeasement, aimed at the green lobby. It was the language of wartime: a declaration of war on fossil fuels.
In one week America has gone from playing the dirty, recalcitrant schoolboy to auditioning as the world leader on climate change. That's quite a shift. And it has indicated to every energy investor and green entrepreneur that America is now the place to do business.
BP and Shell have abandoned their investments in renewable energy in Britain, in favour of the United States. The German power company e.on is close to pulling out of the London Array, Britain's biggest experiment in wind power. Even the Bush Administration operated a more attractive regime of subsidies for renewables than Britain. Now the world has a White House that will invest and regulate on an unprecedented scale.
The first two executive orders signed by the President were, he said, a “downpayment” towards the green economy. One tightened fuel-efficiency standards for cars, an issue once thought to be politically untouchable. The other gave permission to states to move faster than the Federal Government. This was a triumph for Arnold Schwarzenegger, many of whose attempts to green California have been frustrated by George W. Bush. President Obama seems determined that Washington will not stand in the way of innovation. He is colour-blind: it doesn't matter whether you're from a red or a blue state if you're green.
No country rises to a challenge like America. In the 1990s the US cap-and-trade scheme to limit acid rain worked far more quickly and cheaply than expected because, once companies saw the writing on the wall, they stopped moaning and invented clever alternatives.
Today 23 states have their own cap-and-trade schemes for capping carbon emissions. It will not be a huge step to take that national. Even the Republican Governor of Texas is proposing a $5,000 subsidy for his citizens who buy electric hybrid cars. President Obama faces an almighty fight over his stimulus package, which contains $90 billion of clean energy investments. But he is clearly determined to unleash a “big bang” that will change the energy game fundamentally.
For several years, I have been talking to investors and entrepreneurs who have been waiting for this moment. They want to grab some of the $16 trillion that the International Energy Agency thinks will be invested in energy infrastructure between now and 2030. They know that the low-carbon market could grow very fast.
It is no accident that some of the earliest clean-tech investors, such as Paul Allen, of Microsoft, and Vinod Khosla, of Sun, are dot-com billionaires. They remember how quickly fortunes were built when a critical mass of consumers suddenly shifted online. They know that canal barges ran out of customers long before they ran out of canals.
California has effectively outlawed the building of new fossil fuel plants. If the rest of the US follows suit, the big oil companies will have to move rapidly or risk running out of customers for their ageing infrastructure.
There is a long way to go. But what is particularly impressive about President Obama is his determination in the face of public apathy. By pressing the issue early and hard, he is showing true leadership. He wants to make insulated homes, clean technologies and connecting infrastructure a fait accompli. The risk for European politicians is that their own faltering steps will soon be outpaced. The EU carbon market is failing because its politicians speak green but keep shoring up old-fashioned industries.
Only one European leader seems to understand the need to unleash a “big bang”. Two weeks ago David Cameron launched an ambitious strategy for making Britain a low-carbon economy. It has put the Conservative Party way ahead of the field. While Labour writhes in the stranglehold of vested interests in the aviation and fossil fuel industries, the Tories, who are less naive about business, have plans to decentralise energy supply, invest properly in carbon capture, develop marine power and offshore wind, insulate all homes and build an “electricity internet” to help suppliers to make much more finely tuned decisions.
It is a big vision. It understands the need to offer the public what Mr Cameron calls the “holy trinity” of cheap, secure, low-carbon energy supplies. It also understands - which the Government does not - that Britain has very little time left to gain a commercial advantage in the clean energy field. There will be no prizes for coming third in a race in which the US is setting the pace.
Source - The times
Going low-carbon is no longer a seminar subject for caring greens. It's a real live competition to beat the oil regimes and make profits, in which the new environmentalists will be alpha males.
The President's speech was astonishing. “America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said, on his sixth day in office. The US would no longer “bankroll dictators” but would create its own energy from the Sun, wind and soil. Unchecked climate change would lead to “violent conflict, terrible storms and irreversible catastrophe”. It was wrong to deny the science, he said. It was wrong to think that clean energy would damage prosperity. This was not the lukewarm language of appeasement, aimed at the green lobby. It was the language of wartime: a declaration of war on fossil fuels.
In one week America has gone from playing the dirty, recalcitrant schoolboy to auditioning as the world leader on climate change. That's quite a shift. And it has indicated to every energy investor and green entrepreneur that America is now the place to do business.
BP and Shell have abandoned their investments in renewable energy in Britain, in favour of the United States. The German power company e.on is close to pulling out of the London Array, Britain's biggest experiment in wind power. Even the Bush Administration operated a more attractive regime of subsidies for renewables than Britain. Now the world has a White House that will invest and regulate on an unprecedented scale.
The first two executive orders signed by the President were, he said, a “downpayment” towards the green economy. One tightened fuel-efficiency standards for cars, an issue once thought to be politically untouchable. The other gave permission to states to move faster than the Federal Government. This was a triumph for Arnold Schwarzenegger, many of whose attempts to green California have been frustrated by George W. Bush. President Obama seems determined that Washington will not stand in the way of innovation. He is colour-blind: it doesn't matter whether you're from a red or a blue state if you're green.
No country rises to a challenge like America. In the 1990s the US cap-and-trade scheme to limit acid rain worked far more quickly and cheaply than expected because, once companies saw the writing on the wall, they stopped moaning and invented clever alternatives.
Today 23 states have their own cap-and-trade schemes for capping carbon emissions. It will not be a huge step to take that national. Even the Republican Governor of Texas is proposing a $5,000 subsidy for his citizens who buy electric hybrid cars. President Obama faces an almighty fight over his stimulus package, which contains $90 billion of clean energy investments. But he is clearly determined to unleash a “big bang” that will change the energy game fundamentally.
For several years, I have been talking to investors and entrepreneurs who have been waiting for this moment. They want to grab some of the $16 trillion that the International Energy Agency thinks will be invested in energy infrastructure between now and 2030. They know that the low-carbon market could grow very fast.
It is no accident that some of the earliest clean-tech investors, such as Paul Allen, of Microsoft, and Vinod Khosla, of Sun, are dot-com billionaires. They remember how quickly fortunes were built when a critical mass of consumers suddenly shifted online. They know that canal barges ran out of customers long before they ran out of canals.
California has effectively outlawed the building of new fossil fuel plants. If the rest of the US follows suit, the big oil companies will have to move rapidly or risk running out of customers for their ageing infrastructure.
There is a long way to go. But what is particularly impressive about President Obama is his determination in the face of public apathy. By pressing the issue early and hard, he is showing true leadership. He wants to make insulated homes, clean technologies and connecting infrastructure a fait accompli. The risk for European politicians is that their own faltering steps will soon be outpaced. The EU carbon market is failing because its politicians speak green but keep shoring up old-fashioned industries.
Only one European leader seems to understand the need to unleash a “big bang”. Two weeks ago David Cameron launched an ambitious strategy for making Britain a low-carbon economy. It has put the Conservative Party way ahead of the field. While Labour writhes in the stranglehold of vested interests in the aviation and fossil fuel industries, the Tories, who are less naive about business, have plans to decentralise energy supply, invest properly in carbon capture, develop marine power and offshore wind, insulate all homes and build an “electricity internet” to help suppliers to make much more finely tuned decisions.
It is a big vision. It understands the need to offer the public what Mr Cameron calls the “holy trinity” of cheap, secure, low-carbon energy supplies. It also understands - which the Government does not - that Britain has very little time left to gain a commercial advantage in the clean energy field. There will be no prizes for coming third in a race in which the US is setting the pace.
Source - The times
Sunday, 29 June 2008
Stop complaining and start saving the planet
If, as you report, the majority of the British public doubt that climate change is caused by humans then environmentalists should pause for thought ('Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change', News, last week). Might one problem be that environmentalism talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk?
Having frightened us half to death, environmentalists then consistently oppose all large-scale solutions: wind farms, nuclear power, the Severn barrage, carbon capture. People aren't stupid. They see the idea of a return to some pre-industrial Elysium as bonkers. And they know that it won't be enough just to turn down our thermostats, lag the loft, drive a bit less, turn off the telly and perhaps stick a solar panel on the roof.
Having noticed the gap between the scale of the problem and that of the environmentally 'acceptable' solutions, they assume that the problem is exaggerated.
Hugh Pemberton
Bath
The Observer's climate change poll results reflect the reality that many of our fellow citizens are not so much dumb as ostrich-like in refusing to acknowledge that our currently high-carbon consumption lifestyles are a direct contributor to the extreme weather that swept away much of Boscastle in 2004.
The rebuilding of the village (News, 22 June) is a beacon of hope to a less fossil fuel dependent future. A future that makes building a successful sustainable lifestyle possible because of the renewal of a sense of community: a restoration of collective purpose and goodwill.
Richard Denton-White
Citizen party spokesman
Portland, Dorset
It is no surprise that many people are sceptical about the human contribution to climate change. Recent severe weather has been put forward as evidence of climate change, ignoring the disastrous floods in Lynmouth and East Anglia in the early 1950s. Hurricane Katrina caused tragic devastation in 2005 but so did hurricanes in North Carolina in 1776 and Galveston in 1900, which killed thousands of people.
Anthony John Augarde
Oxford
While Andrew Rawnsley's Comment article last week ('Don't rely on the boys with the black stuff, Mr Brown') is bang on target as a lecture to the politicians, we do suggest that it can 'be woolly to be green', but only in a limited sense. We are delighted to note that Rawnsley is not only aware of the hydrogen-powered car, but also of solar power. Put solar-generated electricity together with electrolytically generated hydrogen, and we can start talking of hydrogen-fired power stations and a world living at last on its energy income, not on its nearly exhausted carbon capital.
Sir Leslie Fielding FRSA
Elton, near Ludlow, Shropshire
Dr Cyril Laming FIMechE FRSA
Woodmancote, near Chichester West Sussex
The majority of Britons, you suggest, don't believe climate change is man-made. You refer to possible influence from Nigel Lawson and the Danish economist Bjorn Lomberg. I'm surprised Sooty and Sweep didn't get a mention. What is it that the majority of the British public don't believe in? The huge tonnage of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere? The quantum mechanics of radioactive transfer with regard to carbon dioxide? Inconvenience, wilful stupidity and selfishness have more to do with the MORI poll results than belief.
Dr Sam Langridge
Buxted, Sussex
The main problem that scientists face in getting this message across is the result of previous scares that have become unfashionable, been fixed, or maybe have been just plain wrong: the millennium bug, acid rain, the ozone hole, to mention a few.
Peter Buckland
Uxbridge, Middlesex
Source - The Guardian
Having frightened us half to death, environmentalists then consistently oppose all large-scale solutions: wind farms, nuclear power, the Severn barrage, carbon capture. People aren't stupid. They see the idea of a return to some pre-industrial Elysium as bonkers. And they know that it won't be enough just to turn down our thermostats, lag the loft, drive a bit less, turn off the telly and perhaps stick a solar panel on the roof.
Having noticed the gap between the scale of the problem and that of the environmentally 'acceptable' solutions, they assume that the problem is exaggerated.
Hugh Pemberton
Bath
The Observer's climate change poll results reflect the reality that many of our fellow citizens are not so much dumb as ostrich-like in refusing to acknowledge that our currently high-carbon consumption lifestyles are a direct contributor to the extreme weather that swept away much of Boscastle in 2004.
The rebuilding of the village (News, 22 June) is a beacon of hope to a less fossil fuel dependent future. A future that makes building a successful sustainable lifestyle possible because of the renewal of a sense of community: a restoration of collective purpose and goodwill.
Richard Denton-White
Citizen party spokesman
Portland, Dorset
It is no surprise that many people are sceptical about the human contribution to climate change. Recent severe weather has been put forward as evidence of climate change, ignoring the disastrous floods in Lynmouth and East Anglia in the early 1950s. Hurricane Katrina caused tragic devastation in 2005 but so did hurricanes in North Carolina in 1776 and Galveston in 1900, which killed thousands of people.
Anthony John Augarde
Oxford
While Andrew Rawnsley's Comment article last week ('Don't rely on the boys with the black stuff, Mr Brown') is bang on target as a lecture to the politicians, we do suggest that it can 'be woolly to be green', but only in a limited sense. We are delighted to note that Rawnsley is not only aware of the hydrogen-powered car, but also of solar power. Put solar-generated electricity together with electrolytically generated hydrogen, and we can start talking of hydrogen-fired power stations and a world living at last on its energy income, not on its nearly exhausted carbon capital.
Sir Leslie Fielding FRSA
Elton, near Ludlow, Shropshire
Dr Cyril Laming FIMechE FRSA
Woodmancote, near Chichester West Sussex
The majority of Britons, you suggest, don't believe climate change is man-made. You refer to possible influence from Nigel Lawson and the Danish economist Bjorn Lomberg. I'm surprised Sooty and Sweep didn't get a mention. What is it that the majority of the British public don't believe in? The huge tonnage of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere? The quantum mechanics of radioactive transfer with regard to carbon dioxide? Inconvenience, wilful stupidity and selfishness have more to do with the MORI poll results than belief.
Dr Sam Langridge
Buxted, Sussex
The main problem that scientists face in getting this message across is the result of previous scares that have become unfashionable, been fixed, or maybe have been just plain wrong: the millennium bug, acid rain, the ozone hole, to mention a few.
Peter Buckland
Uxbridge, Middlesex
Source - The Guardian
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