Obama Agenda: The Environment

Let's continue our discussion of Obama’s agenda. Obama is not an environmentalist, that's obvious from his lack of passion and his fealty to the unions. Though, he must placate his base, which includes environmentalists. However, as previously discussed, the environmental movement has been partially co-opted by socialists who want to remake the American economy. Hence, his policies are a mix of liberal environmentalism (forced conservation, massive subsidies, pet projects) and down right socialism masquerading as environmental policy.

Obama's environmental policies come in four parts. The first two are premised on liberal environmentalism. The other two are pure socialism.


Part One: Alternative Energies

Obama's stated goal is to ensure that by 2025, 25% of our energy comes from solar, wind, biofuel, and geothermal sources (note the absence of natural gas and nuclear). To achieve this, he proposes:

• Weatherizing one million homes annually.

• Pouring $150 billion into alternative fuel technology.

This is fairly standard liberal environmentalism. Obama believes that by picking "winners" and subsidizing them, he can bend the laws of physics and economics. But reality tells us otherwise. Physics bends for no one and the history of subsidies is a history of waste, fraud, and failure. Indeed, subsidies keep better solutions from emerging, and thus ultimately prove entirely counter productive. But that's the kind of solution you get from the left.

Undeterred, Obama has already spent considerable amounts toward these goals. For example, the stimulus bill included five billion dollars to weatherize low-income homes. This may cover 500,000 homes by the end of 2009, if you believe the estimates. More insidiously, cap and trade, currently D.O.A. in the Senate, includes a provision that would require an environmental inspection for all homes prior to sale, with the homeowner being required to raise the energy efficiency of the home before a sale would be allowed. If this passes, look for home sales to plummet, fixer-uper’s to disappear, and poor people to be priced out of the housing market.

The stimulus also included $18 billion in grants and loans to renewable energy companies, $100 billion in tax credits, and $6 billion to modernize the nation’s electricity grid. The FY2010 budget inclues another $39 billion in spending and $20 billion in tax incentives on renewable energy.

Obama claims this will generate five million "green" jobs, though the history of subsidies says otherwise.

The cap and trade bill also includes a requirement that utility companies produce 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

Despite all of this, the Energy Information Administration estimates that all of the above will only increase the share of electricity generated from renewable sources to 15.8% by 2030 from its current 7%.


Part Two: End Dependence on Foreign Oil

Obama next proposes to reduce our oil consumption by 35% by 2030. That would represent an amount equal to what we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela (combined). Here's how:

• Increasing fuel economy (CAFE) standards for vehicle fleets.

• Putting one million plug-in hybrid (American made) cars on the road by 2015.

• Implementing a $7,000 tax credit for buying a hybrid.

Obama’s Dept. of Transporation is drafting rules that will require cars and trucks (not previously included) to be 5% more efficient each year until 2016. They will also require that the amount of ethanol or biodiesel used in the US increases from 9 billion blended gallons to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

As for Obama’s hybrid goal, current hybrid sales rates are approximately 175,000 a year, so he may just get his wish. But none of them are American made.


Part Three: Stop “climate change”

This is where Obama's environmental policy loses touch with environmentalism and drives fully into socialism. Obama's goal here is to save the world from "climate change" by:

• Implementing an economy-wide cap and trade program to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by 80% by 2050.

• Developing and deploying clean coal technology.

The undistorted scientific evidence is clear that all of the claims that the Earth is heating up are wrong, the assertions that "carbon causes warming" are false, and the idea that mankind contributes significantly to carbon emissions is an obvious lie. Indeed, as we pointed out before, everything mankind does represents around 3% of all carbon emissions. It is thus logically impossible to rationally conclude that capping carbon will have any effect on global temperatures.

Obama knows this. Yet he's proposing a cap and trade bill, that will severely damage or retard the American economy. Why would he propose a painful cure, that can't work, for a disease that isn't real? Because the socialists in the environmental lobby want to remake the American economy along European-socialist lines.

Not coincidentally, 65% of Americans oppose cap and trade.


Part Four: Punish oil companies and speculators

Finally, Obama proposes a little classic socialism, consisting of class warfare and redistribution. This has never worked before, but, like a typical liberal, he thinks he can make it work. Go figure? Here's his plan:

• Enact a “windfall profits” tax and redistribute the proceeds to poor people in the form of $1,000 energy rebates.

• End tax loopholes (read: deductions) for oil and gas companies.

• Limit “excessive energy speculation.”

• Implement a “use it or lose” it approach to existing oil and gas leases.

Obama’s FY2010 budget ended around $30 billion (over ten years) in tax deductions for oil and gas companies. Beyond that, he hasn’t bothered with any of these promises.


So that’s Obama’s environmental agenda, a mixture of heavy-handed, ineffective and stupid environmental ideas (with obvious “unintented consequences” that they are overlooking) and flat out socialism. That’s why Obama has only a 43% approval rating on environmental issues.


Note: Unless otherwise indicated, everything above comes from Obama’s own website.