Image via Wikipedia

Obama's transition team is working to reassure the U.S. (and the world) that he will make good on his campaign promises to change the course of environmental policy. As covered here by Suzanne Goldenberg for The Guardian:

Barack Obama, who has spent much of the time since his election closeted with his advisers in Chicago, sent a strong signal yesterday that he plans a decisive break with George Bush on environmental policy once he moves into the White House.

Obama has said repeatedly that the global economic crisis remains his top priority, but John Podesta, part of the troika overseeing the transition, said on Tuesday that the environment was at the top of the Democrats' agenda. "I anticipate him moving very aggressively and very rapidly on the whole question of transforming the energy platform in the United States from high carbon energy to low carbon energy," he said.

The recent release of the International Energy Agency's sobering annual report on the world's energy gives a clue to why the reassurance is necessary and why change cannot come soon enough: “Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6°C.” (We've often discussed why that would be disastrous as well as the ways to truly start to solve it.)

President-elect Obama will no doubt have to reiterate his desire to act quickly on climate change many times before Jan. 20. And we hope that during his first speech as president he will deliver a strong message about how we can tackle global warming, and Inaugurate Change.

As Obama has said in the past, Clean Coal Technologies need to be furthered. We need reliable energy. All of the above approach is needed here, as coal continues to life millions of people out of poverty worldwide.

Posted by: Jude C on November 14, 2008 9:43 AM

yeah, sure, as soon as someone demonstrates that clean coal isn't a complete fabrication by the coal industry.

You see, to believe in a technology, it has to be demonstrated first. We don't have a President that believes in magical thinking anymore.

Posted by: Matthew Gerring on November 14, 2008 11:19 AM

In the vice presidential "debate," Joe Biden and Sarah Palin were having a contest over who was a bigger proponent of an imaginary energy source.

We can only hope Obama and Biden's vocal support for "clean coal" was just pandering to get into office....one of those campaign promises you hope they don't deliver.

This language, "high carbon energy to low carbon energy" can be a euphemism for "clean coal" and "safe nuclear"....despite the considerable lifecycle emissions and other significant problems with these energy sources.

Visualize an Obama administration promoting profitable quantum leaps in conservation and efficiency first, while heavily supporting solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, biomass (especially carbon-negative biochar/syngas equipment for farms) and any other sensible distributed energy sources.

Visualize an Obama administration that promotes a ban on mountain top-removal mining and new oil drilling in the United States.

Visualize an Obama administration that promotes a transitional program for workers moving from the oil and coal industries to renewable industries, so the loss of those jobs can't be used as a Republican talking point.

Yes we can..... manifest what we want.

Posted by: greensolutions on November 15, 2008 2:39 AM

Perhaps we can all agree that we live in a round and bounded {not flat and limitless} planetary home, one which is rapidly filling up with people and peoples' products, including millions upon millions of gas guzzlers, other polluting machines and thousands upon thousands of smokestack factories. This is to simply say, absolute global human population numbers are projected to reach 9+ billion people and the leviathan-like global economy is expected to grow in a near-exponential way by many trillions of dollars in the next 42 years.....provided we keep choosing to keep doing what we are doing now.

Please consider the following proposal as an alternative to what appears to be a soon to become unsustainable business-as-usual course of action. This idea for change results from the realization that we have to protect both the Earth's ecology and the human community's manmade economy.

First, the Earth and its environs are to be spared further wanton dissipation and reckless degradation; and second, the global economy needs to be rescued from becoming patently unsustainable in the relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible world we are blessed to inhabit.

What could be accomplished if the human family determined to provide "stewardship incentives" to people who choose to protect the Earth and its environs, the same kind of incentives that are now routinely handed out in huge annual payouts to people who are supposed to be growing the global economy..... something the economic powerbrokers are clearly not doing now?

Please note that billions of dollars are being proposed in financial bailouts for companies building unsustainable products and factories and that year-end bonuses are being directed to "wonder boys" in investment houses and banks who have been uneconomically growing humanity's global economy by collusively creating dodgy financial instruments (e.g., credit default swaps) and fraudulent business models (e.g., Ponzi schemes). These self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have ignored requirements of practical reality and turned a great economic system into a paltry gambling casino, making themselves the primary beneficiaries of pseudo-business activities along the way. In the light of such avaricious risk-taking and conspicuous hoarding behavior, they can no longer be called by any name other than "thieves of the highest order".

Perhaps reasonable and sensible people can agree that the greed of arrogant, self-serving tycoons and bankstas no longer is to be condoned, much less extolled as somehow good, and that the preservation of Earth and its environs needs to given some immediate attention in terms of funding substantial stewardship incentives equal in size to the financial rewards now directed to the economic powerbrokers.

By redirecting wealth, my generation of elders can begin to put the global economy on a sustainable, more reality-based foundation as well as to more reasonably and sensibly fulfill our responsibilities as good enough stewards of the Earth.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176

Posted by: Steven Earl Salmony on November 19, 2008 11:52 AM

hey!
I made on photoshop animated myspace pics.
have a look at them:
http://tinyurl.com/6mvtjg
Thank you for your site :) xoxoxo

Posted by: Tolleytob on November 26, 2008 8:17 AM

Please note that comments will remain open for only 14 days after the article is posted. While previous comments will remain visible, attempts to post new comments after this period will fail. This helps stop comment spam, so your forebearance is appreciated.

The Worldchanging comments are meant to be used for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in our posts. Please note that, while constructive disagreement is fine, insults and abuse are not, and will result in the comment being deleted and a likely ban from commenting. We will also delete at will and without warning comments we believe are designed to disrupt a conversation rather than contribute to it. In short, we'll kill troll posts.

Finally, please note that comments which simply repost copyrighted works or commercial messages will be summarily deleted.