The Gary Null Blog

Tuesday 18 October 2011

by: John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/ungreening-obama/1318963565

Barack Obama was green when he entered the Oval Office. He was a relative newcomer to politics. He was also the most successful fundraiser in presidential history, hauling in more green [3] than the two Democratic and Republican candidates in 2004 combined. And he was, more or less, an environmentalist.

Back in 2004, Amanda Little dug around in Obama's past and declared in Grist magazine [4] that he was a "bona fide, card-carrying, bleeding-heart greenie" going back to his days as an undergrad "trying to convince minority students at City College in Harlem to recycle," and then as a community organizer in Chicago fighting for lead abatement in the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood. As the junior senator from Illinois, Obama got high marks from the League of Conservation Voters for his introduction or co-sponsorship of 100 environment-friendly bills [5] from mercury reduction to raising fuel economy standards on cars.

Running for president, Obama promised to paint the town green. He proclaimed [6] his "intergenerational" perspective, his recognition that "we are borrowing this planet from our children and our grandchildren." After years of supporting the coal industry back in Illinois, he turned around [7] to identify climate change as "one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation" and supported cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. He put [8] sustainable energy policy at the center of his economic renewal, pledging to derive one-quarter of all U.S. energy from renewables by 2025 and to improve the efficiency of federal buildings and all new construction. There would also be tighter regulations on emissions and a much greater commitment to conservation. These promises also had a price tag: $150 billion alone for renewable energy investments.