Few who care about revolutionizing how human beings impact the environment can deny that Obama is a godsend compared to George W. Bush, whose career goals didn't particularly mesh with those of "environmentalists."
The article points to the EPA's declaring global warming a "threat to public health," so that "the federal government can use the Clean Air Act to cut greenhouse gas emissions."
It emphasizes Obama's apparent devotion to creating green collar jobs, uniting environmentalism and the workforce, "Central elements in the American economy that had been at war for decades."
By increasing efficiency standards, reviewing Bush's decision to prevent 13 states from cutting emissions, and by showing "the biggest polluter--the auto industry and utility companies--that he is serious," Obama is bound to save the world.
Maybe I'm a bit dramatic. I suppose the only part of the article that irked me was this:
"The U.S. Agency for International Development supports efforts to improve lives across the developing world--including places where cars and electricity are rarities but where twig- and dung-burning stoves emit tons and more tons of black carbon into the atmosphere, increasing global warming. The agency could send $20 solar-powered cooking stoves to villages in Africa and Asia."
As an anthropologist in training, that statement "improve lives across the developing world" is unsettling. What does it mean? Will sending cheap solar-powered cooking stoves improve the lives of African villagers? Or does it serve to ease the conscious of the highest polluting countries, a symbol of aid and sympathy that allows us to ignore all of the other things that developed countries do to keep developing countries in this position?
Must villagers change their traditions even though it is we Americans who have contributed significantly more to this global crisis?
What will having them import foreign products do for their economic and political position? for their relationship to local materials and resources? I don't see it improving it, and I do think that's an important consideration.
How will these $20 stoves be made? by whom? where? with what materials? If you're selling it for $20, what is the production cost? Changing the efficiency won't change the fact that a product is mass produced or exported, which has a lot of environmental implications, especially for labor conditions, materials and transport methods. It is reasonable to question this. The cheapest commodities usually have roots in questionable labor and environmental practices.
I am not against solar power, reduced emissions or higher efficiency. Obama's actions show a change from Bush. Is it progress? Of course. But, does it show a change in environmental thought? I just don't see his plan as particularly comprehensive, nor do I feel it to be as revolutionary as this article makes it sound.
It operates within the same general framework and political economy that sets up these power dynamics between developed and developing countries in the first place. No, I don't expect Obama to revolutionize the political economy (although he sure made out like that was his goal.)
The article doesn't mention Obama promoting attitudes about "the environment" as an issue of natural resource access/property relations, as an issue of racism and inequality, as a serious human health issue (Swine Flu!), which would be real change.
It touches on jobs, which is great, but it doesn't touch on the politics of food production and how factory farms are subsidized by the US government and our tax dollars. It doesn't discuss how industrial and chemical plants, and other environmentally hazardous industries, are disproportionately placed in minority neighborhoods, the neighborhoods of people with a weaker political and economic voice. It only seems to address issues of consumerism while ignoring the sociocultural constructs that allow these patterns.
It has a very top-down approach to "cleaning the air." Then again, he is the POTUS, so I don't know how he could do otherwise.
"The Climate won't wait..." Neither should Obama, and neither should we. I just think there are a lot of issues that Obama's plan doesn't look at as "environmental" that should be considered as such. Maybe it just hasn't come up yet (although, with swine flu, factory farms should come up!!)
It has indeed only been 100 days. Let's hope for more change.
