Obama and the End of the Party

Saturday 28 February 2009

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by: Hervé Kempf, Le Monde

Hervé Kempf applauds the change in direction President Obama's planned budget heralds, but wishes the president had also told Americans, "The energy party is over." (Photo: Huffington Post)

Barack Obama, the United States's new president, gave a speech before Congress on February 24 that concretely defined the policy he intends to conduct, which was further detailed February 26 in the presentation of his budget plan. Is that policy ecological? Does it respond to the question that will dominate the next few decades?

One could certainly not do worse than George Bush with respect to the environment. But Mr. Obama goes further than a simple correction of the disaster: he is boosting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget; he is relaunching energy efficiency for the stock of federal government buildings; he is preparing a fee-based market for emissions that will generate revenue to be used to assist lower-income households; he is stimulating the production of renewable energy; he is investing in "clean energies."

A great change? Incontestably. Of direction? Yes. Radical? May the wrath of the Obamaniacs strike this chronicler! The answer is: no. In his speech, Mr. Obama mentions the environmental question almost in passing, reducing it to climate change. On other occasions, he had announced that his goal was to reduce his country's Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GGE) in 2050 by 80 percent. That major choice is forgotten in the February 24 speech. Only the goal of developing renewable energies - motivated primarily by the desire to reduce dependence on imported oil - and the CO2 market remained. "We will double the nation's production of renewable energy in three years." To the extent economic reality allows such a development, it will make the share of (non-waterpower) renewable energy in the United States' total energy production go from 6 percent (most of which is from bio-fuels) to 12 percent. That's significant, but not really game-changing.

Mr. Obama did not say, nor even suggest, to his fellow citizens - the world's top GGE emitters - that their energy consumption will have to be considerably reduced. Perhaps it's not yet possible for a political official to say that the hour for sobriety has arrived. In fact, the great majority of those officials seem to believe that by replacing oil with solar panels and windmills, the "American Way of Life" may perpetuate itself. That forgets both energy cost and the environmental crisis.

Mr. Obama is effecting a social policy as audacious as the state of affairs allows. By correcting inequalities, by investing in education and in health, he allows society to orient itself towards activities with reduced environmental impact. The economic crisis forces him to act in the short term with a massive reflationary budget to avoid collapse and with a financial system freed of excess debt. The task of preparing his people for the future remains for this great pedagogue: the energy party is over.

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Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.