Barack Obama

Dodd endorses Obama

Chris Dodd, the only significant presidential candidate to support a carbon tax, has endorsed Barack Obama. He also said he wouldn’t want to be VP … not that there was much danger of that.

Notable quotable

“Anybody has the right to run for president if they file sufficient papers. The job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference.” — Barack Obama, on Ralph Nader’s entry into the presidential race

Last night’s debate

Yeah, so, there was a Democratic debate last night. Far as I can tell, there wasn’t much said about energy or the environment (except in the clean coal ads brought to viewers by debate sponsor ABEC). Both candidates briefly mentioned creating a green economy, but it wasn’t the subject of any back and forth or […]

Will the next president stop construction on the border wall?

Last night's debate included some good news for the embattled wildlife and landscape of the Southwest.

In response to a question about whether or not they would slow construction of the border wall under construction in the Southwest, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton criticized the wall as ineffective and counterproductive.

John McCain scores a big ol’ goose egg on this year’s environmental report card

Today, the League of Conservation Voters released its annual scorecard, which rates legislators based on their votes on issues of environmental significance. The LCV scorecard has its critics, but it’s nonetheless become something of a gold standard when measuring how "green" a lawmaker is. A couple of big stories emerge from this year’s scorecard. The […]

Confused Washington Times disses McCain and Obama on lack of carbon offsets

In a bizarre twist, the conservative Washington Times, which would normally be critical of fuzzy environmental strategies like carbon offsets, is actually attacking the candidates for not offsetting all their campaign emissions. Opening with an absurd headline, "Green crusades lot of talk," the Times writes:

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have called for strict mandatory limits to control greenhouse gases but they aren't leading by example -- each has failed to pay for offsets to cover all of his campaign's carbon emissions.

How does not taking (dubious) voluntary actions carry any implications about one's commitment to serious mandatory limits? Advocating mandatory limits is based on an understanding that two decades of the voluntary approach has not reversed emissions trends. And again and again we've seen how offsets provide at best a limited environmental benefit.

Surely the WT can find more things stories to write about. I've heard it said that Senator McCain has called for carbon limits that are in fact mandatory, but he refuses to call them mandatory. Nah, no story there ...

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

P.S.

Obama won Hawaii, with a convincing 75 percent. That’s 10 wins in a row. In response, Clinton is ramping up her attacks.

Obama pledges to cap carbon

In this video (the second of two) of his victory speech this evening in Houston, at about 7 min. in, Obama discusses energy policy — says we’re shipping money overseas and melting the polar icecaps. He pledges to cap carbon, invest in renewable energy, and raise fuel efficiency in cars (it’s "the only way we […]

Wisconsin goes to Obama and McCain

The Wisconsin primary goes to Barack Obama and John McCain — both got about 55%, to Clinton’s 43 and Huckabee’s 37 respectively (Ron Paul got his usual 4). That’s Obama’s ninth victory in a row. Clinton’s chances of reversing this tide are looking slimmer all the time. On that note, both winners seem to be […]