Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's white paper on energy and the looming climate crisis was a long time coming, but at least one Iowa environmental activist believes it was worth the wait.
"I thought the speech was great," said Mike Carberry, a regional field director for Iowa Global Warming, after listening to Clinton's remarks on Monday. "She pretty much covered the questions that we ask the presidential candidates on all different levels of renewable energy and on global warming reduction."
Carberry, who has attended events for nearly all the presidential candidates and focuses on their energy and climate change policies, said it was important for Clinton to come out on this issue.
"I think that Hillary has been lacking in some of her policies in regard to global warming reduction until this point," he said. "But she hit a home run today because she covered all the bases. Whoever wrote this policy obviously knows what he or she is doing and talking about. If everything she talks about today gets implemented with her as president -- or if anyone as president enacts those policies -- it would go very, very far into helping us find those global warming solutions that we need."
For the first time, according to Carberry, Clinton stopped talking about energy policy as if she was a Republican.
"Hillary, up to this point in the campaign, has been talking a lot about just energy independence," he said. "Now, energy independence is something that is a very worthy goal. Energy independence really doesn't address global warming because you can find more fossil fuels domestically, you can burn more coal and you can build nuclear power plants. Up until this point, a lot of her talks have been similar to the way a Republican talks about global warming reduction. [Republicans] really don't [address it]. So, now she's really risen up and is on par with the rest of the Democratic candidates on these issues."
While Carberry believes Clinton's energy speech today at Clipper Turbine Works, Inc. will most likely prevent her from being discounted by environmentalists based on her energy policy, her Democratic opponents were quick with criticism.
"Ambitious goals are laudable, but without an honest discussion of how you achieve those goals, it's nothing more than empty rhetoric," said Hari Sevugan, communications director for Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd's campaign. "I don't know how it would do in a public poll, but leading experts agree that a corporate carbon tax targeted at polluters is needed to reverse the effects of global warming. That's why the chairman of the Clinton White House Climate Change Task Force calls Dodd's plan the gold standard in the field."
The campaign for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama typically doesn't issue statements based solely on another candidate's speeches. Today, however, was an exception and the campaign's Iowa spokesperson spoke sharply in reference to Clinton's voting record in the Senate.
"You can't bring about change on our energy policy if you change your position to suit the politics of a presidential campaign," said Josh Earnest, Obama's Iowa communications director. "When she had the chance to lead, Senator Clinton voted multiple times against legislation to increase production of renewable fuels and to increase fuel efficiency standards. To stand up for rural America and break America's dependence on foreign oil, we need a leader who won't just tell people on the campaign trail what they want to hear, but one who will tell the American people what they need to hear like Senator Obama did when he called for increased fuel efficiency standards during a speech in front of automakers in Detroit."
In a move that won't go unnoticed by Iowa's agricultural and bio-fuels community, the Obama team highlighted news articles from April 2002 that reported Clinton signing a letter that opposed a proposal to triple the amount of ethanol gasoline nationwide.
"For this generation of Americans, climate change is our space race," Clinton said. "It is our home-front mobilization during World War II and it is our response to the Great Depression."
Although Clinton has been test-driving pieces of her energy policy for the past few weeks, Monday marked the first time she placed it -- all 17 pages -- on the table for public inspection. She will continue to expand on the plan during policy addresses in Newton today and in New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday.
Clinton's 12-Point Plan
1. A new cap-and-trade program that auctions 100 percent of permits alongside investments to move us on the path towards energy independence;
2. A comprehensive energy efficiency agenda to reduce electricity consumption 20 percent from projected levels by 2020 by changing the way utilities do business, catalyzing a green building industry, enacting strict appliance efficiency standards, and phasing out incandescent light bulbs;
3. A $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund, paid for in part by oil companies, to fund investments in alternative energy. The SEF will finance one-third of the $150 billon, 10-year investment in a new energy future contained in this plan;
4. Doubling of federal investment in basic energy research, including funding for an ARPA-E, a new research agency modeled on the successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
5. Action to transition our economy toward renewable energy sources, with renewables generating 25 percent of electricity by 2030 and with 60 billion gallons of home-grown biofuels available for cars and trucks by 2030;
6. Ten "Smart Grid City" partnerships to prove the advanced capabilities of smart grid and other advanced demand-reduction technologies, as well as new investment in plug-in hybrid vehicle technologies;
7. An increase in fuel efficiency standards to 55 miles per gallon by 2030, and $20 billion of "Green Vehicle Bonds" to help U.S. automakers retool their plants to meet the standards;
8. A plan to catalyze a green building industry by investing in green collar jobs and helping to modernize and retrofit 20 million low-income homes to make them more energy efficient;
9. A new "Connie Mae" program to make it easier for low and middle-income Americans to buy green homes and invest in green home improvements;
10. A requirement that all publicly traded companies report financial risks due to climate change in annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission;
11. Creation of a "National Energy Council" within the White House to ensure implementation of the plan across the Executive Branch; and
12. A requirement that all federal buildings designed after January 20, 2009 will be zero emissions buildings.