The Green FDR: Obama's First 100 Days Make -- And May Remake -- History

The media just keeps missing -- or messing up -- the story of the century.

Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues: global warming and the clean energy transition. If the world doesn't stop catastrophic climate change -- Hell and High Water -- then all Presidents, indeed, all of us, will be seen as failures and rightfully so.

How else could future generations judge us if the U.S. and the world stay anywhere near our current emissions path, warm most of the inland United States 10 to 15°F by century's end, with sea levels 3 to 7 feet higher, rising perhaps an inch or two a year, with the Southwest from Kansas to California a permanent dust bowl, and much of the ocean a hot, acidic dead zone -- impacts that could be irreversible for 1,000 years if we don't reverse emissions soon and sharply. This will require an unbroken -- and indeed escalating -- response by our political leadership throughout this century. The same is true for the very important, but still secondary, issue of avoiding the worst impacts of peak oil.

In that sense, what team Obama has accomplished in its first 100 days is nothing less than an unprecedented reversal of decades of unsustainable national policy forced down the throat of the American public by conservatives. He gets a solid A+. While I will present a longer list below, three game-changing accomplishments stand out:

1. Green Stimulus: Progressives, Obama keep promise to jumpstart clean energy, economy -- conservatives keep promise to jumpstop the future


2. Sustainable Budget: The first sustainable budget in U.S. history.


3. Regulatory breakthrough: EPA finds carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans' health and welfare requiring regulation

Obama has clearly demonstrated he has a serious chance to be the first President since FDR to remake the country through his positive vision. Indeed, if Obama is a two-term president, if he achieves even half of what he has set out to, he will likely be remembered as "the green FDR."

As an interesting side note, President Reagan, who is held in some esteem with historians these days, will almost certainly be relegated to a second-tier, if not third-tier, president by the painful dual realities of global warming and peak oil. After all, it was Ronald Reagan who put conservatives strongly and permanently on the pro-pollution, anti-efficiency, anti-clean-energy side, where they remain today (see "Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan" and "Why is our energy policy so lame? Ask the three GOP stooges" and "Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh"). It is Reagan, more than anyone else, who put the GOP on the self-destructively wrong side of scientific reality (though Newt Gingrich is a close second).

Since the establishment media doesn't get global warming -- seeing it mostly through the lens of their standard drama- and personality-driven coverage focused on the ephemeral (did Obama "blink" on earmarks, Newt Gingrich faces off vs. Al Gore ) -- and since establishment historians almost by definition focus on the past, the overwhelming majority of "first 100 days" articles you will read are irrelevant exercises in navelgazing. I won't even bother linking to or debunking the spate of stories in today's New York Times or Washington Post Sunday sections -- the only one worth reading is, not surprisingly, Tom Friedman's.

These myopic stories all befit an industry so shortsighted it couldn't even even understand the implications for its own future of the Internet revolution it was reporting on. As but one of many painful examples, here is Joe Klein writing in the normally green-savvy Time, "Sizing Up Obama's First 100 Days":

The fate of Obama's first year in office, if not his Administration, will probably be determined by the way he handles four distinct challenges -- two in foreign policy and two domestically....

And that's the second domestic challenge: the realization that Congress will not give Obama everything he wants. Aides say the President's moments of frustration almost always have to do with Congress. "We know that not every wagon makes it across the frontier," says a top Obama adviser. "But we're not willing to decide yet which wagons are going to make it and which aren't." In fact, that decision seems more and more apparent: Congress is unlikely to pass the linchpin of Obama's alternative-energy initiative -- a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions to combat global warming and tilt the market toward energy independence but that would also raise energy prices in the midst of a recession.

"The wagon that needs to get through is health care," says a second Obama adviser, picking up the metaphor.

Note the utter lack of knowledge or interest in the substance of the global warming problem. Note the backwards view of the core issue: Cap-and-trade is not the linchpin of Obama's alternative energy initiative -- it is alternative energy that is the linchpin of Obama's effort to avert catastrophic global warming.

Note that Klein, another status-quo establishment journalist like David Broder and Evan Thomas, parrots the standard conservative talking point that Obama wants to "raise energy prices in the midst of a recession," when the cap doesn't even kick in until 2012. Seriously guys, can you think for yourselves?

Note the selective quoting meant to imply that Obama is ready to throw a cap-and-trade overboard to save health care, when anybody who actually listens to any of Obama's major speeches would know how nonsensical that view is -- see In today's big economic speech, Obama reaffirms his commitment to a clean energy economy and strong climate bill: "The only way to truly spark this transformation is through a gradual, market-based cap on carbon pollution"

Obama gets global warming. The media doesn't.

And I'd be happy to take a bet with Klein or anyone else that Congress will pass a cap-and-trade bill before the 2010 mid-term election.

Anyway, let's move from the out-of-touch chattering class to a class in green leadership. How has Obama jumpstarted the one true task of every U.S. President of the 21st century -- preserving the health and welfare of the next 100 billion people to walk the Earth?

Here is a partial list of what Obama has achieved in his first 100 days -- please feel free to add others -- laying the groundwork for him becoming the Green FDR:

1. Obama began the process of blocking the vast majority of new coal plants. The EPA has stopped one new coal plant in South Dakota (Obama EPA blocks South Dakota Coal Power Plant), reversed the Bush EPA's effort to ignore the Supreme Court decision that determined carbon dioxide was a pollutant (and hence that CO2 emissions from new coal-fired power plants needed regulating), and initiated the process of regulating greenhouse gases for the first time in U.S. history.


2. He began the process of dramatically increasing the efficiency of our vehicles, by ordering EPA to quickly give California and a dozen other states the right to put in place tough emissions requirements for tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases -- and by ordering the Department of Transportation to quickly issue and phase-in toughrt fuel economy standards to comply with the 2007 Energy Bill, the first overhaul of the nation's fuel efficiency standards in over three decades (see here).


3. He appointed a first-rate Cabinet and then unleashed them to start inconvenient-truth telling to the public after 8 years of Administration denial and muzzling of U.S. scientists (see Steven Chu: "Wake up," America, "we're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California," and "This is a real economic disaster in the making for our children, for your children").


4. In every single major speech, he has focused on the urgent need for the clean energy transition, for a price for carbon (cap-and-trade and "closing the carbon loophole"), and the unsustainability of our current economic system (see Obama gets the Ponzi scheme: "The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline.")


5. He signed into law the tax credits needed to achieve his ambitious goal of 1 million plug-in hybrids by 2015 -- the key alternative fuel vehicle strategy needed to avert the worst consequences of three decades of successful conservative efforts to stop this country from dealing with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see "Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence"). He also enacted into law $2 billion in grants and loans for R&D into advanced vehicle batteries, a tenfold increase over current funding. Plug-ins and electric cars, of course, are a core climate solution, since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline, even when running on renewable power. In the longer term, plug ins and electric cars can also help enable the full renewable revolution.


6. He signed into law a massive investment in mass transit and train travel -- and laid out an aggressive vision for a high-speed rail network. The 70% boost in funding is a crucial effort needed to prepare this country for a time when air travel simply becomes too expensive for most people (and then a slightly later time when air travel is seen as simply too destructive of a livable climate) -- a time not very far away -- one that the vast majority of readers of this blog will live to see.


7. He signed into law the tax credits needed meet his ambitious goal of doubling renewables in his first term (see "Another big win for renewables in the stimulus bill").


8. He signed into law the funding needed to jumpstart a 21^st smart grid that is critical to enable the renewable energy, energy efficiency, and plug-in hybrid revolution. He also made what may be his most important appointment, Jon Wellinghoff for Energy Commission Chief, who understands the future is not filled with new coal and nuclear plants (see "We may not need any, ever"), and who has already begun jumpstarting the new, green grid ("Huge 'Green Power Express' wind grid gains federal rate incentives").


9. He signed into law the single biggest investment in the deployment of energy-efficient technology in U.S. history, along with strong incentives for state governments to fix their inefficiency-promoting utility regulations.


10. For the first time in three decades, he more than doubled the annual budget for advanced energy efficiency, renewable energy, and low carbon technology after Reagan slashed federal efficiency and renewables investments 80% to 90%, which launched decades of vehement ideological opposition to clean tech by even so-called moderate and maverick conservatives (see "Is a possible 60th Senate seat worth a not-very-green GOP Commerce Secretary?" and "The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma").


11. He put forward, the first sustainable budget in U.S. history, one that invests in clean energy, included cap-and-trade revenue, and seeks repeal of fossil industry subsidies. Yes, he made a serious tactical mistake by tentatively pursuing the possibility of trying to pass a climate bill through reconciliation, which allowed conservatives to score some meaningless tactical political victories and thereby confuse the media into thinking Obama was himself not serious about this issue (see George Stephanopoulos, Nate Silver, and Marc Ambinder all seem confused about global warming and budget politics and Obama says his energy plan and cap-and-trade "will be authorized" even if it's not in the budget "and I will sign it" -- Washington Post confused. In fact his budget and every thing he has done as president shows the reverse is true, that he understands the fate of his presidency and the health and well-being of the American public rests on his success in passing serious energy and climate legislation.

Years from now, long after the economy has recovered, this may well be remembered as the time that progressives, led by Obama, began the climate-saving transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy built around green jobs.

Of course, it's entirely possible that this history-making first 100 days won't remake history. It's more than possible that we won't stop catastrophic warming. But if we don't stop the 100s of years of misery, of Hell and High Water," that will almost certainly be because the conservative movement threw their entire weight behind humanity's self-destruction (see "Anti-science conservatives must be stopped") -- because conservative in both chambers refuse to conserve anything, including a livable climate, and willingly sacrificed the health and well-being of the next 50 generations of Americans for their ideology.

But even if we fail to stop the catastrophe, there is no escape from Americans, indeed, all humans, ultimately having a low-carbon, low-oil, low-water low-natural-capital lifestyle. And thus the vast majority of Obama's initiatives will be recognized by future generations and future historians as the point at which the U.S. government embraced the inevitable and started down the sustainable path that presidents either chose to embrace voluntarily in time to avoid the worst impacts or were forced to embraced by the collapse of the global Ponzi scheme.

Obama is the first president in history to articulate both the why and how of the sustainable vision -- and to actively, indeed aggressively, pursue its enactment. And that is why he is likely to be remembered as the green FDR.

 

 

 

Comments

[Rhetticent]

11:25 AM on 05/05/2009

There is increasing debate about global warming. The figures you cite are admittedly the high end of questionable computer projections, projections which can't even figure the role of water vapor, representing 70% to 95% of greenhouse gasses. CO2 is present in the atmosphere at 380 parts per million, and is a TRACE GAS. This stuff is such incredible nonsense, and further diminishes the credibility of science at a time when we should be doing everything in our power to keep science objective. I would love to see a study that reflected the opinion of scientists who receive funding from the Global Warming Lobby vs. the opinion of scientists who do not. We have turned academics and scientists into prostitutes.

[mioffe]

04:01 PM on 04/30/2009

Meek:
“Planting trees is common sense. I worked as a tree planter myself. It was the hardest job I have ever had.
I'm afraid that I have exceeded your 10 kilo weight limit for a 2 wheel vehicle with my electric bike. It probably weighs in at 20 Kg. It meets your other specifications though.
Al Gore is not a very good presenter for sure.
Please give me some links so that I can investigate the concepts that you are advocating.”

I did not work as a tree planter, but I am thinking if we will put process on industrial level planting and cutting trees could be healthier job in the world.
I advocate road without intersection under roof with common air-conditioning. Rotated wheels, by electric motors, as part of road will move plastic chair with aerodynamic cover. Second’s, third’s floors and roof of houses and business buildings could be parts of these roads. Give Engineers of car industries and homebuilders this direction and I am sure they will make it happen during one year.
www.ductworkinstallation.com/EnergySaving/EnvironmentPage/tabid/89/Default.aspx

[The Meek]

06:19 PM on 04/30/2009

I checked out your link and bookmarked it.

I speed read the material and it appeals to me.

You do need a good editor to make the article easier to understand.

[mioffe]

10:34 AM on 04/30/2009

Meek:
“Regenerative braking is easy to implement on electric cars, buses and trains.”
“Oregon produces lots of clean power. Nuclear is good in theory, but it's application was bungled”
“Even a coal fired electric plant is more efficient than the internal combustion engine in cars.”
“We don't have the mental capacity to engineer our climate.”
Dear Meek:
Regenerative braking is good direction but not enough. Even if we will increase efficiency of our car, appliances etc., from 25-40% to impossible 100% it will mean that only four times more people will live as middle class in USA. It is not enough even for USA. We have right now millions of heavy cars on the roads, which bumper to bumper bring to jobs and back mostly one person. Instead of any car we need carts weighting 10 kg, which moving by rotation of wheels, which axis are not moving.
Sun is only one nuclear power plant, which we need.
Clean power-wind, solar cells, geothermal, not only very expensive, but also not so green as advertised. Power of wind moves carbon dioxide and others greenhouse gases to cloud level, where infrared radiation escape to space.
If water vapor cool the air, increasing evaporation by growing forests not only will “engineer climate but also produce cheaper than cool wood energy.
We need reevaluate mistakes of Al Gore, who enslave our mental capacity to wrong directions of less carbon dioxide and only conservation of energy by stupid directions.

[The Meek]

12:54 PM on 04/30/2009

Were to start? You have taken some of my comments out of context, but you seem to be sincere.

For instance, the engineering of our climate referred to putting mirrors in space and other massive interventions.

Planting trees is common sense. I worked as a tree planter myself. It was the hardest job I have ever had.

I'm afraid that I have exceeded your 10 kilo weight limit for a 2 wheel vehicle with my electric bike.. It probably weighs in at 20 Kg. It meets your other specifications though.

Al Gore is not a very good presenter for sure.

Please give me some links so that I can investigate the concepts that you are advocating.

[mioffe]

08:37 PM on 04/29/2009

“Years from now, long after the economy has recovered, this may well be remembered as the time that progressives, led by Obama, began the climate-saving transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy built around green jobs.”
This world hysteria of low-carbon economy is the main reason why I am trying to stop new administration follow mistakes of Al Gore.
I am inviting author to start think like scientist, not like celebrities, repeating one another.

[mioffe]

08:28 PM on 04/29/2009

“He began the process of dramatically increasing the efficiency of our vehicles,
He signed into law a massive investment in mass transit and train travel”
We need to pay attention that most automotive engines have 25-30% thermal efficiency. Because this efficiency apply to move not only passenger but and heavy cars, real efficiency of cars will be less than 1%.
Mass transportation will not help, because we are increasing distance to place where we are going and time. Mass transportation takes more energy on short distances between stops for one or two persons.
Perhaps mass (m) of car 2,000kg, mass of driver 100kg, and speed (V) of car 65 miles per hour, or 30.7 m per sec.
Kinetic energy of this car:

E=1/2mv2=1/2x2100x30.7x30.7=1/2x2100x942.

As you can see mass of car and driver change amount of kinetic energy is twice time more than speed.

If cars will stop on every block reduction of mass for car is very important.
In case of public transportation mass of bus will be around 10,000 kg. If this bus will hold perhaps 100 persons with average mass 100 kg it will be additional 10,000 kg. If bus will stop on every light and on every bus stop after few blocks, situation will be almost 10 times worse than for usual cars. Analyzing public transportation we need to remember additionally that we are wasting not only fuel, but also our time, which is more important than anything else is.

[The Meek]

05:14 AM on 04/30/2009

Regenerative braking is easy to implement on electric cars, buses and trains. That will recover some of that wasted kinetic energy.

Urban planning can reduce the distances people have to travel.

[mioffe]

08:08 PM on 04/29/2009

“Obama gets global warming. The media doesn't.”
I wish the best for Obama administration, but unfortunatelly as President Obama, as Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, as media and author, repeat mistakes of Al Gore. It is very dangerous situation. Gingrich has different, but also not scientific solutions.

[mioffe]

08:01 PM on 04/29/2009

“a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions to combat global warming and tilt the market toward energy independence”
If author keep attention on property of water vapor, he will be the first who start fight against this stupid ideas, which will not only bring damage to Nature, but also will not make us energy independent. We need to stop this unscientific propaganda as soon as possible. We need reevaluate science of global warming and stop mass media misleading about reality. Thomas Friedman the same as others repeat mistakes of Al Gore.

[mioffe]

07:51 PM on 04/29/2009

“Green Stimulus: Progressives, Obama keep promise to jumpstart clean energy, economy -- conservatives keep promise to jumpstop the future.
Regulatory breakthrough: EPA finds carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans' health and welfare requiring regulation.”
Clean energy like wind, solar cells, geothermal are very expensive and not so clean as advertized. It is shame for our scientists, who provide so unscientific direction for our ghovernment.
Carbon pollution only in mind of Al Gore and his follower are so important and dangerous. Water vapor more important greenhouse gas and completely misunderstand by author, Al Gore and our Government.

[The Meek]

05:06 AM on 04/30/2009

I checked your profile mioffe. You didn't post any qualifications. What do you suggest we do?

[HarryTheCat]

05:33 PM on 04/29/2009

I doubt very much that historians will judge any president on how we did with global warming, climate change, clean energy or any of the other green stuff. What WILL count is how did we deal with the real issues like terrorism, foreign policy and economic sustainability. I, for one, don't want us to be a footnote in some future history book that says "they had some really cool windmills, but didn't have the b*lls to defend themselves.

[The Meek]

07:04 PM on 04/29/2009

Being able to supply all of our own energy needs is essential for our security..

What's this thing about testicles anyway. Women are just as brave and have just as much grit as men do and I would rather have them covering my back than some tough talkin macho man.

Cheney did not make me feel safe, he did not make America safer, but he did make a lot of private contractors very rich.

[Overtone]

03:32 PM on 04/29/2009

Breakthrough technology will rapidly make possible inexpensive energy that will sharply reduce the need for fossil and nuclear fuels, worldwide.

Ignorance, greed, and arrogance, are the primary causes of both our economic and energy dilemmas.

Fortunately, as this post by Joe Romm reflects, the planet is becoming a new type of universal university, thanks to the internet.

See The Brooklyn Project at http://www.aesopinstitute.org for a path to accelerate necessary and desirable changes.

See http://www.chavaenergy.com for surprising information concerning a few breakthrough technologies with the potential to accelerate rapid reversal of our economic and energy concerns.

One example is new technology that can turn new, fuel-free, cars, trucks and buses that need no external battery charge into power plants when parked. Imagine vehicles that pay for themselves - by wirelessly selling power to the local utility.

This will be a cost-competitive alternative to building new coal and nuclear power plants.

It illustrates one application of revolutionary new technologies that convert energy sources never before commercialized. Scientists will be understandably skeptical until independent laboratory validation takes place. That is on the horizon, as is production of self-powered generators, and demonstration devices for schools and universities.

[Dredd]

02:22 PM on 04/29/2009

Mr. Romm,

Thank you for the profound truth, the inconvenient truth, and the painful truth.

Gotta keep the big picture:

[sc300nc]

01:08 PM on 04/29/2009

Not everyone buys into global warming. It is still up for debate, irregardless of what you state. Your comment about judging 21st century presidents on just 2 things is idiotic to say the least. You have no idea what challenges we may see over the next 90 years.

Global warming is a concept, not a fact. For every "expert" you can produce that says it exists, another "expert" can be found with contrary opinions. Cap and trade is only a ruse for additional tax revenue for the fed'l gov't.

Sorry we are not all as intelligent as you and don't really get it. Cap

[mtwashingtonmike]

01:27 PM on 04/29/2009

It doesn't have to be about global warming. I am as conservative as they come and I have plenty of doubts about the whole global warming thing. However I am certain that renewable energy will wean us off of foreign oil. The addiction to is the greatest long term threat to our economy there is. Can you imagine what cutting our foreign oil imports in half would do for our balance of trade, the dollar?

It won't be easy and it won't happen overnight but energy independence is something anybody should embrace no matter what their political persuasion.

And if the air gets a little cleaner in the process, that is a bonus.

[charliesherman]

02:51 PM on 04/29/2009

First of all, "irregardless" is an illogical word. Second, whether or not global warming is occurring, extracting and burning fossil fuels is ecologically unsustainable, and a disincentive such as cap and trade is required for this reason. It's not just a "ruse" for tax revenue, but good job on repeating the party line, much easier than thinking for yourself.

[The Meek]

12:49 PM on 04/29/2009

Being a working class person, I see journalists a slackers that probably can't even change the oil in their cars. They love drama, trivia and their own verbosity.

Sure there are some good ones and we need them, but the majority should go out and get a real job.

Unfortunately for them and because of them, there aren't any good jobs now. Oh well.

Maybe if Obama succeeds some position might open up in the renewable energy field.

Thanks for the article.

[overd0g1]

11:03 AM on 04/29/2009

Alas, I fear you are correct. Freedom and liberty have been relegated to the dust bin of history. Welcome to the machine.

[The Meek]

05:03 PM on 04/29/2009

What are you talking about? Are you on the wrong thread?

[mtwashingtonmike]

10:43 AM on 04/29/2009

A good article but one thing he fails to even mention, perhaps because it is obvious, is the 24 hour news cycle and the disservice it does to everyone who consumes it. A green energy policy will take years to properly impliment and years before the full benefit is seen. Obama will be retired on the shores of Lake Michigan for a while before the full effect of some of the things he has done on energy in the first 100 days are realized. The media can't get its arms around anything long term. 6 months is equal to 6 years as far as they are concerned.

There are many things I disagree with Obama about, but this is not one of them. His greatest legacy will be to get this country moving away from carbon and into renewables