A look at Bill Richardson’s environmental platform and record

Update: Bill Richardson dropped out of the presidential race on Jan. 10, 2008.

Bill Richardson has been an advocate for clean energy and action against climate change during his tenure as governor of New Mexico from 2003 to the present, and now, as a Democratic presidential candidate, he’s pushing perhaps the biggest and most far-reaching energy and climate plan of the campaign. Previously, Richardson served in the Clinton administration as secretary of energy and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and, from 1983 to 1997, as representative of New Mexico’s 3rd District in the U.S. House.

Read an interview with Bill Richardson by Grist and Outside.

Key Points

• Calls for cutting U.S. oil demand 50 percent by 2020.
• Calls for 30 percent of the U.S. electricity supply to come from renewable sources by 2020, and 50 percent by 2040.
• Calls for a cap to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 90 percent from 2006 levels by 2050, and 20 percent by 2020.
• Calls for raising fuel-economy standards for automobiles to 50 miles per gallon by 2020.
• Writing a book about his energy vision — Leading by Example: How We Can Inspire an Energy and Security Revolution — due out in October 2007.

Video and Audio

Watch Richardson’s campaign ad on clean energy:

Watch Richardson ask: Do you have the next big energy idea?

Quotable Quotes

• “Climate change is the major environmental issue of our time. Nothing poses a bigger threat to our water, our livelihood, and our quality of life than a warming climate.”
  — Dec. 26, 2006, in a climate change executive order [PDF]

   

• “I believe that coal — carbon-clean coal — will play a role in our energy future, and that we must support the deployment of carbon-clean coal technologies here and around the world.”
  — May 17, 2007, in a speech on his presidential energy plan at the New America Foundation

   

• “I want [New Mexico] to be the Saudi Arabia of wind, solar, and biomass.”
  — April 1, 2006, at a Democratic fundraiser