Enter the Democrats
| Author | Jeremy Bernstein |
| Position | Publisher of Inside EPA |
| Pages | 34-38 |
Page 34 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2009, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Jan./Feb. 2009
co v e r sT o r y
As a senator, Barack Obama was known
as a left-of-center moderate from a coal-
rich, agriculture-friendly midwestern
state who preferred to get things done
even if it meant sacrificing his most ag-
gressive environmental proposals.
His support for the coal industry
ticked off environmentalists, especially his biparti-
san efforts to promote liquefied coal, a high pollut-
ing transportation fuel. But he frequently sought to
provide incentives to industry to clean up its act. His
“Health Care For Hybrids” plan, which proposed to
cover some of the auto industr y’s health care costs in
exchange for a commitment to build more clean-burn-
ing vehicles, was a case in point. As a junior member
of the Environment and Public Works Committee, he
also fought — successfully — for strict environmental
regulations, such as his efforts to force EPA to issue
long-overdue lead paint standards and to put in place
a federal ban on mercury exports.
Obama won election as president on a platform that
followed a similar approach. He promised to roll back
many of the Bush administration’s deregulatory mea-
sures, create an aggressive new cap-and-trade scheme
to control greenhouse gas emissions (the top priority
for many Democrats), and launch a green New Deal
— a $150 billion subsidy program for clean energy
industries, with the revenue derived from auction-
ing emissions credits, as well as a massive short-term
spending program to finance environmentally friendly
infrastructure as part of an emergency economic stim-
ulus program. “If you’re going to run deficit spending,
then it better be in rebuilding our roads, our bridges,
our sewer lines [and] our water system,” Obama said
late in the campaign.
at his proposed spending programs would argu-
ably help create millions of new green jobs — at least
five million by Obama’s estimates — allowed him to
satisfy both environmental and labor constituencies,
bridging the Blue-Green divide that has often stymied
environmental policymaking. His calls to build a new
electricity grid to transport wind and solar energy
from remote areas, and to require chemical plants to
strengthen their facilities and switch to safer chemicals,
even provide the added benefit of increased homeland
security protections, he argued.
e Wall Street bailout that passed at the height of
the campaign gave Candidate Obama an opportunity
to make a broader ideological argument for reregula-
tion, whether for the financial sector or pollution con-
trols. e bailout shows the limits of “deregulation run
amuck,” Obama said, promising that, if elected, he
Enter the
Democrats
e economic crisis may have helped
Barack Obama win election as the 44th
president, but it is also likely to complicate
what appear to be his otherwise promising
early efforts to implement the aggressive
climate, energy, and environmental
policies he campaigned on
Jeremy Bernstein
Jeremy Bernstein is Publisher
of Inside EPA.
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