Barack Obama’s Iowa Victory: Good or Bad?
sduford on Jan 04 2008 at 3:46 pm | Filed under: Politics, Science
Obama won the Iowa primary and I generally think that it is a good thing. I like Obama, except for one glaring flaw: his environmental policy. Obama is very close to the coal industry and a big supporter of it. Consequently, he only pays lip service to the biggest issue facing humanity: global warming. His plan is to basically do nothing until 2050, at which point it will be too late to avoid disaster.
Appropriately, DeSmogBlog.com just gave Obama their SmogMaker of the year award for 2007.
While I like Obama a whole lot more than I like Clinton, at least Hilary has the right perspective when it comes to Global Warming, and that is a critical issue at this point in time.
[...] Sylvain Duford’s Soapbox placed an interesting blog post on Barrack Obama: Good or Bad?Here’s a brief overview [...]
I like Obama, especially his ability to inspire young people to get involved in solving some of the problems facing the U.S. & the world. Here is his stated energy policy - note the policy with respect to coal is for new, cleaner technologies:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/energy/
Unfortunately there is no such thing as “clean coal”. Coal is and always will be one of the worst carbon polluters. Sequestration technologies are expensive and unproven. In particular, no one has been able to guarantee that the CO2 will not leach back out into the atmosphere.
But to plan an 80% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2050 is too little too late, and it means that HE will really not have to do anything during his term in office. Strong action needs to be taken NOW. Most of the CO2 that we put in the atmosphere will stay there for centuries, and continue the warming trend for a very long time.
Unfortunately, it is the very nature of the completely money-driven American political system that makes all politicians pawns of industry and lobby groups. I hold very little hope that even a Hillary Clinton, with her strong program on climate change, would not turn into an industry puppet as soon as elected and end-up doing next to nothing.
Sylvain, though I am usually in agreement with most of what you post, I certainly don’t agree with your original post here. It seems to me to be a prime example of “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” It also just seems to feed into the current climate of misguided candidate bashing that has become so popular of late. The question to ask yourself is once in power, who do you think will be best able to something to combat climate change? My opinion is that any of the major Democrats would likely take serious action once elected in response to the changing consensus on this issue.
For the record, Obama won a 100% voting record award in 2003 from the Illinois League of Conservation Voters for his work in the Illinois Senate. In addition, He gets the top score of all the major candidates from the League of Conservation voters — and only Dennis Kucinich has a better voting record during the 2005-2006 session (Obama scored a 98%… Only Kucinich got a 100). See the LCV’s profile of him here:
http://www.presidentialprofiles2008.org/Obama/tab1.html
By the Way, Smogblog has retracted its 2007 “award” to Senator Obama:
http://www.desmogblog.com/desmogblog-apologizes-to-barack-obama
Finally here is a statement released by Obama’s office in June of this year:
“Senator Obama recognizes that global warming is one of the most significant problems that we face. He supports an 80% reduction in carbon emissions from all sources by 2050 and a 10% reduction in the carbon emissions of transportation fuels by 2020. Senator Obama supports research into all technologies to help solve our climate change and energy dependence problems, including shifting our energy use to renewable fuels and investing in technology that could make coal a clean burning source of energy. However, unless and until this technology is perfected, Senator Obama will not support the development of any coal-to-liquid fuels unless they emit at least 20% less life-cycle carbon than conventional fuels.”
Yes, I saw that they retracted it. Perhaps I’m being too negative on him. I still think that 10% by 2020 is too little too late. Once (if) he hits office, the reality of the power of industry lobbies will hit him with full force and he will likely backtrack, which will be easy since his promised targets are beyond his term. Even climate change poster boy Gore buckled under the lobbyists and actually worked hard to reduce the effectiveness of Kyoto.
Obama’s insistence on so called “clean coal” is already a big red flag.
But I agree that he is one of the best candidates on this front. Unfortunately, when it comes to industry-driven American politics, best does not mean good. He’s still my favourite candidate though.
Yes, I am very cynical when it comes to American politics, or politics in general for that matter.
[...] my last post on Barrack, DeSmogBlog has retracted their award and apologized. I still think his policy on Global [...]