The next U.S. president will be handed a blueprint for making the nation a global leader in countering human-created climate change under a new University of Colorado Denver effort to be unveiled today.
Spearheaded by former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart, the Presidential Climate Action Project spells out steps that should be taken within the first 100 days and beyond in the new administration to address what is becoming a growing political, social and economic issue.
“This isn’t just another agenda to be prioritized down the road somewhere, but it (should) move toward the top of the deck of presidential intention,” Hart said Monday as he offered a preview of the effort.
Framed in terms of national security, economics and social justice, the plan calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050 through measures such as a cap-and-trade system on industrial carbon generation.
“It recognizes that a whole range of steps must be taken. There’s no silver bullet,” Hart said. “It is a comprehensive problem. The solution has to be comprehensive as well.”
Long list of ideas
The plan, created by a team of climate experts and policy experts, offers more than 300 recommendations — spanning economics, agriculture, transportation, architecture, national security and energy independence — that can be achieved through new laws, regulatory changes and executive orders.
Among the recommendations:
Improve average vehicle fuel efficiency to 50 miles per gallon by 2020 and 200 mpg by 2050.
Dramatically reduce oil consumption and eliminate oil imports by 2050.
Require carbon neutrality in all new buildings by 2030.
Provide $1 billion in awards for technology breakthroughs and allocate another $1 billion to states and municipalities that adopt carbon-reduction policies.
Hart and the project’s executive director, William Becker, already have discussed the plan in detail with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., made initial contact with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and are reaching out to the other campaigns.
“We hope to build a kind of grassroots fire under this action plan so that candidates understand that there is widespread support for an approach that is comprehensive and is urgent,” Hart said.
The most recent report issued by the Nobel-winning International Panel on Climate Change indicates that nations must act strongly within just a few years to head off the most costly and disastrous impacts of climate change.
Hart, a Democrat who served two terms in the Senate and made two bids for president in the 1980s, maintains that the plan is a nonpartisan effort.
Democratic candidates, however, generally have placed greater emphasis on reducing greenhouse gases than Republicans, who focus more on energy independence and efficiency.
“Republicans are committed to confronting climate change by reducing greenhouse gases in a way that does not undermine economic growth,” said Paul Lindsay, spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “This is done by enhancing new technologies and, at the same time, being better stewards of the environment.”
He acknowledged that energy security is “a very important issue in voters’ minds” — and pointed out that President Bush discussed it in his last State of the Union address — but said the platforms of the GOP candidates vary in their approach.
Environmental activists, however, contend that Bush has all but ignored climate change and note that the United States is the only industrialized nation that has declined to adopt the greenhouse-gas reductions specified by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol after Australia signed on with the election of a new prime minister last week.
“Post-carbon economy”
Hart and Becker assert that the move to a “post-carbon economy” will generate jobs, save money through energy conservation and offer market stability, and they suggest that Colorado could become an epicenter for new-energy development touted by the likes of Gov. Bill Ritter.
They also contend that climate change is a national-security issue that affects everything from crop-withering localized droughts to geopolitical instability.
“We have our wagon hitched economically to finite resources. It’s inevitable that those resources will become shorter in supply while the demand is increasing among developing nations,” Becker said. “A lot of people think that competition will lead to conflict.”
Steve Lipsher: 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com
