Free Republic

Al Gore has a competitor for title of America's climate crusader. His name is Barack Obama, and of all his immediate foreign policy changes none will mark as big a shift from the Bush administration as his approach to cutting carbon emissions, the leading cause of global warming. "President Obama will be like night and day compared to President Bush," Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told reporters this week at U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Poznan, Poland.

Barack Obama doesn't have a mandate for his global warming policies. He doesn't even have a mandate from his most fervent supporters.Last month, President-elect Obama promised to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — approximately a 16% cut — and then to cut them an additional 80% by 2050. That's a 68% cut from today's levels and would mean trimming U.S. carbon emissions to roughly where they were in 1905. Think about 1905 for a minute. There were just 77,988 registered vehicles in the U.S., compared to over 250 million today — or just one vehicle...