Clinton Faces the Seacoast’s Environmental Community
July 26th, 2007 by Carbon CoalitionSenator Hillary Clinton met in Portsmouth yesterday with the media and New Hampshire citizens to discuss her plan to achieve energy independence and combat climate change. Clinton assured the crowd that her administration “will have a global warming agenda.” Just like the internet, which came from a government initiative, Clinton believes that new energy innovation will “unleash the genius of the American economy.”
Clinton described a new program, her Green Building Fund that would assist Americans to be more efficient and create jobs. States would receive one billion dollars per year from the federal government to make their school, fire, and office buildings more energy efficient.
Just like the Apollo and Manhattan Projects before, Clinton emphasized the need for an intense research and development program in search of alternative fuels and energy efficiency to combat climate change. Clinton’s Strategic Energy Fund plan will provide fifty billion dollars to R&D.
Where does this money come from? Clinton mentioned three sources. Royalties from drilling in public lands would create ten billion dollars. Twenty billion dollars that was previously given to oil companies as tax subsidies would be reallocated to fund research. For the final twenty billion dollars, Clinton would provide the oil companies with a proposition. Either they commit twenty billion to research in alternative fuels, or they will be forced to pay a tax on their past and future ‘windfall profits.’ She then assured the crowd that even though “they will say I’m going after the oil companies. Well, I am going after the oil companies.”
Other take-aways from Clinton’s remarks yesterday afternoon include legislation for economy wide emissions reductions. She supports 80% reductions of 1990 levels by the year 2050. After recognizing that there were flaws in the Kyoto treaty, Clinton stressed the need for cooperation with international partners, especially China and India.
We see elements of six of the Carbon Coalitions seven benchmarks of a comprehensive action program, but there is no solid commitment to an early action program to be implemented within 150 days of the election at this time.
To hear audio of the entire speech click here
To hear audio of the Q&A click here
