A Green Agenda for Obama's First 100 Days

Yale Environment 360. Posted January 8, 2009.

Yale Environment 360 asked a wide-ranging group of environmental activists, scientists, and thinkers to answer the following question: If you were advising Barack Obama, what would you tell him are the most important environmental and energy initiatives that he should launch during his first 100 days?

Although the respondents -- including entrepreneur Paul Hawken, Rajendra Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, activist Van Jones, and green investing leader Mindy Lubber -- represent a broad range of interests, they were largely in agreement on how best to solve the current economic and environmental challenges. Basically, they agree that weaning the country off fossil fuels and onto renewable sources of energy is the single best way to rebuild the U.S. economy; that Obama must use all the tools at his disposal -- from invoking the Clean Air Act for regulating greenhouse gas emissions to persuading the new Congress to put a price on carbon -- to tackle climate change and spur the move to alternative energy; that under an Obama administration the United States must lead in forging a new global climate change treaty; and that, given the rapidity of global warming, Obama must be made fully aware of the “scary” scientific facts -- as environmentalist Bill McKibben puts it -- and move with a sense of urgency.

Here are their responses:

Bill McKibben, author, scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and founder of 350.org.

It seems to me that job number one with climate change involves Obama sitting down with his new employees -- most importantly the world's premier climatologist, Jim Hansen at NASA -- and making sure he has a full grounding in the latest climate science. The new president needs to understand what the cutting edge is telling us: that the targets and goals of even two or three years ago are insufficient -- 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere has become the new red line.

If Obama understands that, much else will eventually flow -- especially a much deeper examination of whether coal can continue to be a part of the way we power this planet. Without a deep and scary sense of the science, Obama will do lots of good and useful things, but nothing that adds up to the scale of change that we actually need. So I think the first hundred days should be less about action and more about information gathering.

Our one hope is that Obama is as smart as he seems -- that he can assimilate the complex but not especially technical science, reach a conclusion about who is right, and then set policy. Scientific realism has to drive political realism in this case, because as the problem is currently understood in Washington, political realism won't come anywhere near grappling with it.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

I believe the most important initiative that President Obama should undertake would be to announce an ambitious plan for reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases on par with what the European Union has put forward -- namely the 20-20-20 plan. This would require the U.S. to cut its emissions by 20 percent over 1990 levels, as well as generate 20 percent of its electricity through renewable energy sources, by 2020. Everything else would flow out of this set of goals, because business and industry would take immediate action in developing new technologies and refining existing ones to make them economically viable before 2020.

One major area in which the new President could bring about a major structural change would be to strengthen passenger railway transport in the U.S. by providing low interest loans to build high-speed lines that would lure passengers away from air travel. Simultaneously, the new administration must mandate stringent mileage standards to produce energy-efficient cars. States and local governments should be provided with financial support to carry out energy-efficiency retrofits in existing buildings and ensure much higher targets of energy efficiency in new construction.

The U.S. should also donate liberally to the adaptation fund that hopefully will be part of the new agreement on climate change to be negotiated by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen. Several poor countries that bear no responsibility for the increase in greenhouse gases will need major resources to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and as a matter of international justice, the U.S. must play a large role in these adaptation efforts.

I would tell the new President that all these measures would not only meet the challenge of climate change and establish the willingness of the U.S. to be part of the solution, but would also ensure energy security for the U.S. in the future and create much-needed new employment.

Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a U.S. coalition of investors, environmental groups, and public interest groups working with companies on sustainability issues. She also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk.

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