Barack Obama

(1/19/2009) - On January 15th, the House Appropriations Committee released a summary of the $825 billion stimulus bill they are proposing, which includes $550 billion in new spending and $275 billion in tax cuts over the next two years.  Though the eventual bill would not be ready for Obama to sign on inauguration day as he had planned (they are now aiming for mid-February), some version looks likely to pass.  Before its rushed through the House and Senate, the bill’s contents need to be discussed, so I’m glad the House has released this preliminary summary.

The bill contains $144 billion for energy, transportation and environment related projects.  Some of the funding includes: 

-$32 billion “to transform the nation's energy transmission, distribution, and production systems.”

-$22.6 billion to retrofit and weatherize public and “modest-income” homes to make them more energy efficient. 

-$30 billion for highway and bridge repair/construction.

-$31 billion to “modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings.”

-$19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration.

-$10 billion for mass transit and rail. 

(1/12/2009) - I’ve now written several articles that mention my affinity for a carbon cap-and-trade program.  In this article, I will outline what I mean when I say cap-and-trade.  In Part 2, I will talk about the cap-and-dividend plan, why I favor cap-and-trade over the carbon tax, and some reasons why we must recognize the limits of any cap-and-trade system in the efforts to prevent catastrophic global warming. 

If anyone but John McCain has been the Republican nominee, we would have heard a lot more about cap-and-trade programs.  Instead, we all we got from two presidential candidates was banal agreement on the topic as they chose to debate more contentious issues such as health care reform and the war in Iraq. 

Despite the lack of arguments, passing a cap-and-trade program is a key component of President-Elect Obama’s energy and environment platform, and he has stated many times that this is one of his three (or, after the financial meltdown, four) policy areas he will focus on.  So what is a cap-and-trade program, anyways?

Cap-and-Trade Defined

A cap-and-trade system is one in which a government regulates the release of pollution into the public environment (atmosphere, oceans, rivers, or what have you).  The government determines how much pollution is appropriate (hopefully based on good science) and distributes permits to those companies who want to pollute.  These permits are tradable.  Companies that emit less than authorized may sell their permits to companies that need to pollute more in order to do business.