A Green Agenda for Obama's First 100 Days

Yale Environment 360. Posted January 8, 2009.

The following measures are important to jumpstart progress on solving our nation’s climate and energy crisis.

• Direct the EPA to act on the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA, which established that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger both human health and welfare. This opens the door to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.
• Direct the EPA to allow California to enforce its more stringent, fleetwide standards for vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases. Then direct EPA to use existing authority to propose national global warming pollution standards for cars and trucks that are at least as tough as those approved by California. These standards should be finalized within one year.
• Direct the EPA to begin the rulemaking process for medium and heavy-duty vehicle global warming pollution standards under the Clean Air Act, coordinated with the Department of Transportation, and to start the rulemaking process for global warming pollution standards for aviation and shipping.
• Support alternatives to driving, such as mass transit, walking, biking, telecommuting, and carpooling.
• Instruct the EPA to identify measures to address stationary-source emissions, such as from coal-fired power plants, and work with Congress on legislative approaches to curb these emissions.

The current economic crisis will be raised as a reason to defer President-elect Obama's promises to address energy and climate challenges. However, carefully crafted actions on climate change, alternative energy, and new incentives for green technologies can put the country on a path to a future that better reconciles our environmental goals with our economic aspirations.

Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich, are in the Department of Biology and the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, where he is Bing Professor of Population Studies and Professor of Biological Sciences and she is Senior Research Associate.

The monumental task before us, and the new president, is to solve the human predicament -- the combined crises of overpopulation, wasteful consumption, deteriorating life-support systems, growing inequity, increasing hunger, toxification of the planet, declining resources, increasing resource wars, and a worsening epidemiological environment that increases the probability of unprecedented pandemics.

The new administration should embrace a population policy that strives to reduce birthrates in the U.S. and abroad, promotes access to legal abortion, and immediately lifts ideological restrictions imposed on government Web sites dealing with reproductive health. The administration should also promote programs to educate and open job opportunities for women and to provide effective contraception in poor countries.

Overall, the administration’s policies should adhere to a number of overarching principles: embrace zero population growth, emphasize conserving more than consuming, expand global educational opportunities, and initiate a Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior to begin a debate on what population size, consumption patterns, economic arrangements, and technologies will lead to a sustainable future.

We hope the new president is willing to dramatically change how the U.S. and the world work. We hope he will not employ conventional economists who will try to restore the same old growth machine that is destroying the world. We hope Obama will take steps to transform our energy economy so the nearly inevitable eventual war with China over fossil fuels can be avoided. Then there is the issue of curbing rich-world consumption. The U.S., with 4.5 percent of the global population, cannot continue to consume roughly a quarter of Earth’s resources; similar statements apply to the other rich nations.

Betsy Taylor, founder and board president of 1Sky campaign to urge federal action on global warming.

President Obama must rally the nation to action but first he should announce a national day of prayer and reflection. The president can only prevail with a bottom-up outpouring of public support for transformational change. He must ask us to reclaim our best selves and a new ethos of public service, rather than greed, as the core of the American identity.

President Obama should help us visualize a promising future: a world without fossil fuel and with five million new green jobs, clean energy, and basic security for all. He should issue an “all hands on deck” call to action and focus overwhelmingly on programs and policies that simultaneously cut global warming emissions and foster economic opportunity. I recommend the following three policy initiatives on climate and energy:

Set a national goal for reducing greenhouse gases and engage all sectors in moving beyond rhetoric to action.

• Commit to mandatory reductions in carbon emissions that meet the demands of science. Reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 25-40 percent by 2020 and work to achieve zero emissions by 2050.

Urge Congress to enact comprehensive climate legislation that puts a price on carbon, compensates Americans for rising energy costs, and funds adaptation programs

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