With Obama’s selection of Clinton for Secretary of State, Gates for Secretary of Defense, and Volcker as Head of the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board, many are asking: “Where’s the change?”
The next big appointments to watch are for energy and environment. Will Obama take risks and push for radical measures on climate change? Tom Blumer of Pajamas Media doubts it.
With an economy in official recession, Obama and Team will not be in a position to raise Social Security and other taxes on the wealthiest Americans, restore bans on offshore drilling that Bush just removed, and establish a cap-and-trade system targeted partly to delay or prevent the construction of new coal-based power plants.
Green policies could mean less money in people’s pockets, and actions which the public perceives as crippling to the economy are simply not the things to do while calling for expansion to pull it out of a downward spiral.
And Europe may be giving Obama his best excuse to backtrack. The European Union, so far the most vociferous proponent for the global environment, seems to be muting its some of its extreme positions on the climate change agenda. The Czech Republic is assuming EU presidency in 2009, and Vaclav Klaus will most likely use the position to object loudly and frequently to Kyoto Protocol-type targets and agreements to markedly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. No wonder the expectation is that the ongoing climate change talks in Poland will probably yield few if any concrete results.
And the promised millions of green jobs?
Based on the long experience of the British wind power industry, Michael Liebreich, the Chief Executive of New Energy Finance (a consultancy specializing in renewable energy), warns that “… expectations are being set unrealistically high by politicians who are making promises inconsistent with economic fundamentals.”
Despite the strong commitment and support of the UK Government, there is still a big gap for the UK to reach its target of 30 gigawatts from renewable energy by 2020. How many jobs will be created still remains to be seen.
And Obama has not even begun yet.
We wish the President-Elect a lot of luck and we will give him our support. But it is going to be a very tough local and international setting to be pushing for meaningful actions on climate change.
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