DesertBlog

10-Point Plan for Obama

We were left temporarily speechless by the election of Barack Obama Tuesday night. But now it’s time for the country to get down to work repairing the damage of the last eight years. With that in mind, here’s a 10-point plan for Obama and the country, focused on the environment and the economy.

1. Immediately address the emerging Peak Oil and Global Warming crises by retooling our economy into a much more locally based one (which will happen whether we like it or not), seeking ways to foster local food and energy production, and promoting public and human-powered transit over private passenger vehicles.*
2. Realizing the dire nature of point #1, begin to solve our population problem by supporting comprehensive sex education, all types of family planning, and an equitable solution to our immigration quandary.
3. Renegotiate the NAFTA treaty to continue to foster trade while protecting the environment, the poor and workers in all countries (thereby reducing immigration pressures mentioned in point #2).
4. Institute a 50-cent gas and diesel tax (as recommended by such conservative commentators as Charles Krauthammer), with proceeds to go into clean energy technologies, and offsets provided through tax breaks aimed at the poor and working class.
5. Expand spending on rail, both freight and passenger, to reduce our dependence on long-haul trucking and the private automobile.
6. Begin a massive public works investment in renewable energy, and make sure to put the horse before the cart: energy efficiency and conservation investments first, LOCAL point-of-use renewables and efficient energy technologies second (see point 1), and distant, inefficient, large-scale renewable energy plants last (if ever).
7. Mandate a nation-wide “feed-in tariff” for rooftop solar power, as has been so successful in Germany.
8. Restore the protections for endangered species under the Endangered Species Act that the Bush Administration has attempted to remove.
9. Restore the full integrity of the Clinton Administration’s Roadless Area Rule, and of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, including removing special exemptions for mountain-top removal mining techniques.
10. Get the U.S. back in the business making useful and necessary things, such as renewable energy technologies, through government investment and your wise tax breaks for corporations that create employment at home.

*For more on the Peak Oil crisis, see James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency or his weekly blog posts.