Every politician makes a lot of promises during their campaign, and after running with the slogan of “Change”, there were a lot of expectations made of Obama. But how has he been filling those expectations? Here's an issue-by-issue look at how Obama's been living up to his campaign promises as President of the United States:
Obama promised this during his campaign, and he's trying his hardest to get it passed. Essentially, this would force manufacturers buy permits from the government to emit carbon dioxide in their production processes. The “cap” part means that there would thus be a maximum amount of carbon emitted in the United States, which could gradually be decreased over time. The “trade” part means that these permits may be distributed without restriction amongst different businesses.
The idea is that this will encourage manufacturers to come up with more efficient, less ecologically harmful processes for creating their products, and to reduce US emission to 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83% by 2050.
This is not without precedent. It is likely to be modeled after other successful cap-and-trade programs, such as the Acid Rain Program or the EU ETS. Currently, there are several regional emission plans that this would be merged with, including the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Western Climate Initiative, and the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord.
This would also raise money for the US government, which is currently suffering under a record-breaking 14-digit debit—a mere drop in the ocean at about half a trillion dollars from 2012 to 2019, but it's a start.
Critics argue that this would result in rising prices of goods across the board, which would in turn make the economy even worse. However, proponents of the plan argue right back that a monetary value can't be placed on environmental health—and that this will help spur research in green technologies, creating even more potential jobs.
The economy is in the pits right now: it's the fixation of every American, no matter how they're individually doing. Obama promised to kill two birds with one stone in this tying-together of his environmental and economic policies: create new “green” jobs in the environmental sector to help the environment. He's made serious steps towards this one, even if he hasn't quite hit the 5 million he promised quite yet. In that economic stimulus package he signed, there's billions of dollars in green investment: $17 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, $6 billion to fix up and modernize the electricity grid that powers our country, $6 billion guaranteed in loans for renewable energy projects—and more. All this money will go directly into hiring people to help, be they factory works making hybrid cars or the engineers that design them or the researchers that come up with the technology we need. Come 2010, environmental science in the United States will be in a very different state than it was during the Bush years.