Obama And The Energy Future

Friends of the Earth, the newest and most forward-thinking environmental group, endorsed Barack Obama today, mainly because of his stance on the gas tax suspension.

“We endorse Senator Obama because we believe he is the best candidate for the environment,” said Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder. “The ‘gas tax holiday’ debate is a defining moment in the presidential race. The two other candidates responded with sham solutions that won’t ease pain at the pump, but Senator Obama refused to play that typical Washington game. Instead, Obama called for real solutions that would make transportation more affordable and curb global warming. He showed the courage and candor we expect from a president.”

Experts agree that gas prices are likely to decline only slightly under a Clinton-McCain “gas tax holiday”—if they decline all. Instead of signing onto this gimmick, Obama has called for long-term solutions that would limit oil consumption by requiring cars to be more fuel efficient and expanding transportation options including passenger rail.

So Hillary Clinton is not only content to call for pointless proposals that would potentially eliminate hundreds of thousands of highway construction jobs and do next to nothing for working people, she's happy to lose all of her allies in the environmental movement over it. Obama is right - this is a function of status quo political thinking:

He used the tax holiday — an idea that Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, also supports — to illustrate the Democratic Party's need to set itself apart. "When we're offering the same things that John McCain is offering on the cheap, that means we are not presenting a truthful response to the challenges we face in America," Obama said. "We can do better than that this time."

Now, Clinton's team is countering with the fact that Obama voted to suspend the gas tax in Illinois a few years ago. Right, and he LEARNED from it that the oil companies do not pass that relief on to the customer. He also knows that George Bush isn't going to impose any tax burden on oil companies.

"At best, this is a plan that would save you pennies a day for the summer months - that is, unless gas prices are raised to fill in the gap, which is just what happened in Illinois when we tried this a few years ago," Obama said.

"Meanwhile, unless you can magically impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies overnight to pay for the holiday, it could imperil federal highway funding and cost Indiana more than 6,000 jobs," Obama said.

In the short-term gas prices are going to be high; it's a fact of life in a country where the fuel efficiency is too low and the driving distance is too long. There are plenty of things you can do in the long-term to reduce people's expenses, help save the planet from the ravages of global warming, kickstart the economy and enhance quality of life. It's steps like investing in high-speed rail and mass transit, improving the fuel economy of the national fleet of cars (which was in last year's energy bill, much to the dismay of lawmakers who like their SUVs), eliminating coal-burning power plants (good for Kathleen Sebelius) and investing in wind, solar and biomass, and eventually spurring those investments with money from a tax on carbon that will actually be an economic engine:

If there's a paradise for environmentalists, this Nordic nation of 9.2 million people must be it. In 2007 Sweden topped the list of countries that did the most to save the planet - for the second year running - according to German environmental group, Germanwatch. Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices [...]

The main reason for this success, say experts, is the introduction of a carbon tax in 1991. Swedes today pay an extra 2.34 kronor (20p) per litre when they fill the tank (although many key industries receive tax relief or are exempted). "Our carbon emissions would have been 20% higher without the carbon tax," says the Swedish environment minister, Andreas Carlgren.

"It was the one major reason that steered society towards climate-friendly solutions," reckons Lindberg. "It made polluting more expensive and focused people on finding energy-efficient solutions."

"It increased the use of bioenergy," concurs Professor Thomas B Johansson from the University of Lund, a former director of energy and climate at the UN Development Programme. "It had a major impact in particular on heating. Every city in Sweden uses district heating [where steam and hot water are piped to a building in a particular area]. Before, coal or oil were used for district heating. Now biomass is used, usually waste from forests and forest industries." [...]

Today, environmental measures are common throughout the country. Take Linköping, Sweden's fifth biggest city, which is running its fleet of buses and rubbish lorries, a train line and some private taxis on biogas, from methane produced from the entrails of slaughtered cows.

Similarly, Stockholm's central station is planning to harness the body warmth of 250,000 daily commuters to produce heating for a nearby office block. The body heat would warm up water that would in turn be pumped through pipes over to a new office block. And King Carl Gustaf XVI last month had all the lights at royal castles turned off for an hour to back an energy efficiency campaign.

While our gas tax pays for highway construction, it's structured essentially the same way as the carbon tax. This is what Hillary Clinton wants to eliminate for the sake of a few votes in Indiana.

I believe that Obama's base of support among young people will spur him to fiercely confront climate change in his first term, for environmental, economic and national security reasons. We aren't going to get off fossil fuels overnight but we can make a difference. But not if conventional Washington thinking rules the day.