What Does the Delegate News Mean for the Environment?
After a long, drawn out battle, Obama has finally clinched the Democratic nomination (numerically speaking) for the 2008 presidential race. So what does this
Jul 31, 20204.4K Shares735.1K Views
After a long, drawn out battle, Obama has finally clinched the Democratic nomination (numerically speaking) for the 2008 presidential race. So what does this mean for energy and the environment?
Reuters has a nice little Factboxreflecting what the presidential candidates have been saying about climate change, gas prices, oil use, fuel economy and biofuels. Here are the Obama highlights:
- Obama says he would reduce CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by 80 percent lower than that by 2050. He also says he would require fuel suppliers to cut CO2 use by 10 percent by 2020.
- With crude oil prices at record highs, Obama says he would investigate activities of energy companies and stop filling the emergency oil reserve.
- He also says he would reduce overall oil consumption by 35 percent by 2030 to offset OPEC imports.
- If elected in November, Obama says he would double fuel efficiency standards for automobiles by 2030. As part of this effort, he says he would give automakers tax credits to come up with eco-friendlier technologies.
- For renewable fuels, Obama says that by 2030, he would increase renewable fuel usage to 60 billion gallons of biofuels like ethanol (yep, keeping the corn debate wide open). As for non-food sources, he would call for 2 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol from sources such as switchgrass to be produced by 2013. He would also make it mandatory for all new vehicles to be fuel-flex — that is, they can run on gas or on biodiesel — by the end of 2012.
He’s said what he plans on doing. Now he just needs to answer the question of how he’s going to do it.
Hajra Shannon
Reviewer
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