Barack Obama, finally demonstrating the boldness and courage promised by his rhetoric, has released a policy proposal to control the weather! Now that's the audacity of hope. So I'm impressed. That said, I tend to outsource my thinking on these matters to Dave Roberts and Brian Beutler. Dave Roberts says:
most of this is squarely inside, or just barely out ahead of, the Democratic consensus on energy...it's not clear that Obama's plan is radically more brave than Hillary's. I wish Obama would back up his rhetoric with policy -- if he's going to characterize Hillary as a creature of Washington special interests, it would help if he released an energy plan that was substantially more ambitious than hers. Anyhoo, my initial impression is that this is a fairly bold proposal, worth cheering.
Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised -- even shocked -- at its quality. It's a deft mix of good politics and strong, substantive policy... with his promise to auction 100% of cap-and-trade credits, Obama has put himself out ahead of all the other frontrunners. He deserves the praise he'll get for it....It's just stunning how far the energy policy discussion has come in the last couple of years.
It's extremely good. Exceptional in some places, slightly nebulous in others, perfectly in line with expectations in yet more, but also perfectly in line what we should expect from good public servants at this point, and certainly more than I expected from Obama.
$150 billion--billion--in clean energy research should shut up Shellenberger and Nordhaus...The fact that he's proposing we auction all the carbon credits is crucial.
The CAFE stuff is a bit vague...I like the goal here, but don't really know the plan. I know he's proposed earlier a type of small scale cap-and-trade system intended to lower the carbon intensity of liquid fuel. That's not a CAFE standard at all, but it's also not mutually exclusive from one, either. Is that still in play? Does this require huge subsidies for car companies? Can he get it past the Congress without them? Lifting CAFE standards to 35 mpg by 2020 is proving...shall we say...difficult? in the current Congress. Doubling it (to a total of 55 mpg) means, in the end, getting Congress to approve a much greater increase over a much shorter time frame, within four or five years of this last attempt--which, again, is still up in the air.
The whole plan is here.
