Our next President gets it on renewable energy...

Today’s post: Wednesday, 11-19-2008

I am a socially liberal, mostly pro business, Republican.

And I told everyone I could to vote for Barack Obama & voted for him myself.

The reason is that the most important issue for our next president and therefore was in the campaign is to help the United States become a world leader in making a massively large and fast start on switching our energy production and entire economy to run on nearly 100 percent renewable energy and to rapidly stop the global warming and pollution that burning fossil fuels has caused and still is causing. Doing nothing on this issue or close to nothing as our previous administration did will result in our (& the world’s) economic collapse or even a massive die-off of humans planet wide. No jobs, no food, and unbreathable air would be NO fun at all.

Barack Obama clearly understands that while John McCain showed every indication of making 90 % of his efforts on energy just drilling for more oil if he would have been elected.

However, I was a bit disappointed that Obama and his team did not play this up very well in their campaign either in the Democratic primary or in the general election. I think they could have won by an even larger margin than they did had they done a really good job of doing that.

I’m much reassured now though.

Yesterday Barack Obama appeared, by using a video he made, with California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger at summit meeting of governors on the theme of climate change and global warming.:

Here are two news stories about it I found online.:

“LOS ANGELES (AFP) Tuesday, 11-18-2008

US president-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed he would "engage vigorously" in global climate change talks and that denial was no longer an acceptable response to global warming.

Obama said in a surprise video message to a summit of US state governors on climate change here that he would show new leadership on the issue as soon as he takes office in January.

The president-elect also addressed his message directly to delegates at United Nations climate change talks in Poland next month.

"While I won't be president at the time of your meeting, and while the United States has only one president at a time, I've asked members of Congress who are attending the conference as observers to report back to me on what they learn there.

"And once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change.

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious." “

“AP Tuesday, 11-18-2008

He reiterated his support for cutting greenhouse gas emissions using a cap-and-trade system, an approach also favored by Schwarzenegger. Obama said he would establish annual targets to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them another 80 percent by 2050.

Obama also promoted anew his proposal to invest $15 billion each year to support private-sector efforts toward clean energy. He said tackling climate change can create millions of new jobs as the U.S. invests in technologies to promote solar and wind power, biofuels and cleaner coal-fired plants.

"I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House," Obama told the participants. "Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

Scientists say the kind of ambitious goals set by Schwarzenegger and Obama must be reached to minimize the consequences of rising global temperatures.”

I’ll repeat some key Obama quotes from this report.:

"While I won't be president at the time of your meeting, and while the United States has only one president at a time, I've asked members of Congress who are attending the conference as observers to report back to me on what they learn there.

"And once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change.

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious." “

"I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House," Obama told the participants. "Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

X* X* X* X* X* X*X* X*

There is even evidence that Obama is beginning to take action to make this happen.

Google and its founders have made it clear they understand that we need to switch to renewable energy and stop polluting our world by burning coal. They have a motto, “Renewable energy cheaper than coal.”

So, when I read that Obama was considering Google’s energy programs director, Dan Reicher, as a candidate to become Energy Secretary, that sounded promising. But I was concerned that Reicher might not have the Washington experience that someone like Bill Richardson of New Mexico has. No Problem. Reicher not only does have such experience from when he worked in the Energy Department during the Clinton administration, his specialty then was renewable energy and energy efficiency.

So, he may be the exactly right, best person for the post.

(It does sound as if Reicher may need some other people in the administration and the Energy Department who know how to deal well with the existing energy companies. But this time, that’s not the most important part of the job. However, it does need to be done well. So that’s why such people will become important. If Bill Richardson winds up in the Administration as he very well might, he might fill this role well. As Governor of New Mexico and a Clinton Administration veteran, he does know that area well.)

There are many articles on what shape the Obama Administration will take.

All this is a VERY promising sign that Barack Obama DOES get it on renewable energy.

So my faith in him has been upheld so far.

Events often cause US Presidents to have new priorities after they take office that tend to derail their other priorities. But it looks as if Obama knows that the renewable energy priority needs to stay one of his highest priorities no matter what other events occur.

It does help some that overcoming the financial crisis and creating new jobs are now so important because of the faltering economy – because, jobs in energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy can help to solve this problem. Enthusiastic people working on worthwhile new projects that then begin to work well creates prosperity. This process now may happen enough in renewable and clean energy to lift the entire economy.

One thing I do think Obama’s new administration needs to do is to provide extremely strong positive incentives for switching to or creating renewable energy first; have cap and trade tried in a state or two, and have a plan B and a plan C ready to go if in that state or states energy costs increase at rates that cause economic problems or problems with energy supply develop.

It IS totally clear that adding the REAL environmental costs of burning fossil fuels needs to be forced into the market price of burning those fuels by governments world-wide over the next few decades. Simply put, it’s imperative that we do this enough to power the switch to clean renewables as fast as we possibly can. We need to make renewables MORE affordable and turn off using the damaging burning of fossil fuels for energy as fast as we can without damaging the overall economy while making the transition.

But, the simulation I read about of an operating model of a Cap & Trade system ran up energy costs too fast for the economy to adapt to because of people gaming the system for short term financial gains. So, although a version of Cap & Trade may work eventually, we need to be very careful of trying Cap & Trade systems without the mechanism set up in advance to tweak them or replace them with direct taxes that ramp up in a more controlled, albeit rapid, fashion.

Something very like this happened recently in California where I live when the deregulation of the production and sale of electric power generation was tried. We had utilities going bankrupt; rolling blackouts; a sharp increase in the costs of producing electricity; and some unethical types getting rich by gaming the system.

When the whole US economy is at stake, and given the impact of the US economy on the world economy and the current downturn, I think we need to try some smaller experimental Cap & Trade systems before we try it nation-wide.

This is an area of the switch to renewable energy that will be challenging to do well. And, I hope the Obama Administration handles it well.