Inside Obama's green plan for energy and the economy

LA Times ^ | August 28, 2008 | Edward Silver

[BloodOrFreedom]

For Barack Obama, climate change is change we can believe in.

Speakers at the Democrats’ convention this week, by and large, have taken as dim a view of fossil fuels as the Iraq war. If you were quaffing your brew at each mention of "alternative energy" from the podium, you’d have a lot of recycling to do by now. The green theme climaxes tonight, with environmental hero Al Gore setting the stage for the candidate’s address.

Since he launched his campaign, Obama has offered remarkably detailed proposals and demonstrated fluency in the language of energy and carbon. He promises a broad agenda aimed at growing sustainable industries quickly. That means jobs, profits and a balm for the planet, but it’s a riddle when, or if, that growth would offset the financial costs of change.

If he takes the helm, Obama’s blueprint may be welcomed by an admiring Congress. Then comes the hard part: implementing it.

Like rival John McCain, Obama proposes a market in permits to emit greenhouse gases, commonly termed "cap and trade." His approach is stricter, however, and his final goal -- an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050 -- more ambitious. Even though emissions limits are defined by the government, cap and trade is widely seen as a fair, market-driven way to, in Obama’s words, make "dirty energy expensive."

Coal generates half the country’s electricity, but with carbon costs imposed, new plants won't be built. Under Obama, investors may shun coal producers that only sell domestically while favoring those that feed booming demand overseas, such as Peabody Energy Corp. Meanwhile, firms that crack the engineering challenge of burying coal emissions underground would get more than a few contracts.

[Shermy]

“cap and trade is widely seen as a fair, market-driven way”

Liberals making up stuff again.

[griswold3]

Isn’t this the ‘pay to play’ drivel that the ‘progressives’ have been trying for years?
How much is it going to cost me to run my dirty diesel using tractor trailers?
Enron, anybody?
Bite me, Bite me hard!

[Need4Truth]

$4.00 per gallon gasoline is just a precursor to what the o-man and 9p-nan have planned.

[Red6]

Warning, warning, energy crisis ahead!

This is what happens when idiots run what should be a private and competitive free market. NONE of the plans are fair, NONE of them are free market activities. ALL of them have a government setting caps on emissions, subsidizing, mandating percentages of energy that come from “so called” green sources, and impose made up taxes on those that are dirty. That's not a free market guys, no matter what some bimbo reporter from the LA Times thinks.

ALL of these great contemporary ideas (Populist trash for the masses) will cost us higher energy prices and possibly even reduce the reliability of energy long term. Shouldn't our reporter from the LA Times know something about brownouts?