27/11/08

Environment ministers preparing for next week?s talks on global;warming in Poznan, Poland, have been sounding decidedly downbeat. From;Paris to Beijing, the refrain is the same: This is no time to pursue;ambitious plans to stop global warming. We can?t deal with a financial;crisis and reduce emissions at the same time.There is a very different message coming from this country.;President-elect Barack Obama is arguing that there is no better time;than the present to invest heavily in clean energy technologies. Such; investment, he says, would confront the threat of unchecked warming,;reduce the country?s dependence on foreign oil and help revive the;American economy.Call it what you will: a climate policy wrapped inside an energy;policy wrapped inside an economic policy. By any name, it is a radical; shift from the defeatism and denial that marked President Bush?s eight;years in office. If Mr. Obama follows through on his commitments, this country will at last provide the global leadership that is essential;for addressing the dangers of climate change.In his first six months in office, Mr. Bush reneged on a campaign;promise to regulate carbon dioxide and walked away from the Kyoto;Protocol, a modest first effort to control global greenhouse gas; emissions.Still two months from the White House, Mr. Obama has convincingly;reaffirmed his main climate related promises. One is to impose (Congress willing) a mandatory cap on emissions aimed;at reducing America?s output of greenhouses gas by 80 percent by;midcentury. According to mainstream scientists, that is the minimum;necessary to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide;and avoid the worst consequences of global warming. Mr. Obama?s second;pledge is to invest $15 billion a year to build a clean economy that;cuts fuel costs and creates thousands of green jobs. That includes;investments in solar power, wind power, clean coal (plants capable of;capturing and storing carbon emissions) and, as part of any bailout,;helping Detroit retool assembly lines to build a new generation of; more fuel-efficient vehicles.Mr. Obama has surrounded himself with like-minded people who have;spent years immersed in the complexities of energy policy.His transition chief, John Podesta, was an early advocate of assisting;the automakers and of finding low-carbon alternatives to gasoline.;Peter Orszag, his choice to run the Office of Management and Budget; (where environmental initiatives went to die during the Bush years) is;an expert on cap-and-trade programs to limit industrial emissions of; greenhouse gases.Success is not guaranteed. Last year, a far more modest climate-change;bill fell well short of a simple majority in the Senate. At least on;the surface, it seems counterintuitive to impose new regulations (and,;in the short term anyway, higher energy costs) on a struggling;economy. Mr. Obama will need all his oratorical power to make the;opposite case.The historical landscape from Richard Nixon onward is littered with;bold and unfulfilled promises to wean the nation from fossil fuels,;especially imported oil. What is different now is the need to deal;with the clear and present threat of global warming. What is also;different is that the country has elected a president who believes;that meeting the challenge of climate change is essential to the; health of the planet and to America?s economic future.

The New York Times