“In Tough Economic Times, Voters Backed the Candidates Who Favor Big Action on Climate and Energy”
Statement of John Passacantando, Executive Director, Greenpeace USA on the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States:
Now that we know Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States, we can turn to the next critical question of national leadership: In this historic moment, how bold will President Obama be?
It was Candidate Obama who introduced the theme of change to the 2008 campaign, and it proved so powerful among voters that the other leading candidates quickly adopted it. It’s a cliché for candidates to run against the status quo in Washington, no matter how long they’ve been there. But in 2008, Obama seems to grasp that “change” has a much deeper meaning.
The 21st century is presenting us with new problems that politics as usual can not solve.
An astonishing achievement that brings hope back to those who care about global warming, clean energy, or rational, moral domestic and international policy.
McCain sold his soul, embraced the basest form of politics, and hugged not only Bush but the dirtiest of fossil fuels — and lost. Sad.
We may finally see what a country does when its leader really gets energy efficiency!
What are you thinking and feeling?
Tell me about the lines, the voting machines, the mood. I will be live-blogging this and need all the material I can get!
Yes, you read that right.
Your first — and I’m guessing your last — vist to Rove.com takes you quickly to “Election 2008: State of the Race” and “the final Rove & Co. electoral map of the 2008 election”:
If When Obama wins, he certainly will owe a double debt of gratitude to Rove for
One of the two best polling analysis websites called the election for Obama at 5:09 pm Monday:
Actually, the other terrific polling analysis website seems to have called it for Obama at 4:47 (see here). But only Pollster.com offers a detailed rationale in their post for a 6% Obama win, one piece of which is:
The right wing has gone ballistic over a newly leaked tape of Obama talking about the impacts of a mandatory cap on carbon emissions. The leading conservative website, the Drudge Report, had (somewhat surprisingly) downplayed the issue yesterday but now has three “above the fold” links in red:
Palin Unleashes New Attack Against Obama On Coal…
Audio: Obama Tells Paper He Will Bankrupt Coal Industry…
Official calls comments ‘unbelievable’…
Let’s put aside for the moment how odd it is that this interview from January was leaked Sunday — far too late to have any impact whatsoever on the campaign. Obama’s remarks — and the reaction they have spawned — deserve attention because they tell you a lot about both candidates.
Let’s start with McCain’s amazing reponse in the Washington Post:
“My friends, you know what Senator Obama said about a year ago, he said he had not been a, quote, coal booster,” he said, as the crowd booed. “My friends, I’ve been a coal booster and it’s going to create jobs, and we’re going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. That’s going to help restore the economy of the great state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
What a sad journey it has been for John McCain. Once a principled supporter of regulatory action on climate change, now he is the number one cheerleader for increasing the production and consumption of the two most carbon-intensive fossil fuels, coal and oil. No wonder he has progressively backed away from support for action (see “Palin shocker: McCain won’t regulate greenhouse gas emissions“).
In fact, the grand total of US coal mine employment is about 80,000. McCain must be confusing 2008 with the last time the coal industry had hundreds of thousands of jobs — the 1950s. Even the Post felt compelled to add, “In practice, coal exports amount to a tiny fraction the coal produced in the U.S. According to the Energy Information Administration, only 2 percent of overall U.S. coal production was exported in 2007.”
The coal mining industry has become astonishingly productive and has shed several times the number of jobs that any climate regulation would. And that brings me to Obama’s very blunt remarks and why they are much more interesting for what they tell us about his understanding of the impact of serious climate regulations than for any political impact they could have — the whole audiotape is here:
Anybody can be an armchair pundit. But how many of you are willing to put your predictions online for all to see?
Simplifying the format of the Washington Post Crystal Ball Contest ‘08, it is time to call:
The tiebreaker is the number of House Dems (currently 235 Ds).
The winner gets a post on Climate Progres with his or her post-election analysis — woo-hoo!
But, of course, you’ll have to beat my predictions:
This raises a key question: Does Cheney hate McCain so much that he actually wants him to lose — or is he merely so out of touch that he thinks this endorsement will help McCain?
Obama said in Colorado that congratulations were in order:
Until yesterday, the The Great Mentioner had Schwarzenegger on the shortlist for Obama Energy Secretary. That was the buzz in the Politico’s “Dems sketch Obama staff, Cabinet,” and on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, where Arnold said of Obama:
I would take his call now, I will take his call when he’s president — any time. Remember, no matter who is president, I don’t see this as a political thing. I see this as we always have to help, no matter what the administration is.
True, the Terminator runs on nuclear power, but Schwarzenegger has probably been the most aggressive governor and the country in terms of embracing climate policy and climate solutions. Plus he gives Obama some bipartisan cred.
But Arnold totally trashed Obama yesterday in Ohio, presumably some long-ago promise he made McCain. He rather gratuitously ocked both Obama’s policies and physique (!):
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