Global Warming In the News

At issue is whether New Jersey and other states can implement clean car programs to reduce global warming and promote advanced vehicle technologies.

After being stuck in reverse for eight years on our energy problems and global warming, America has gone from zero to 60 in President Obama’s first month behind the wheel.

Obama campaigned on a vision of a clean energy economy that helps the United States solve global warming, frees us from dependence on oil and puts Americans to work in good jobs.

From the first days of this administration, the president has pursued policies that put us on that path. He appointed clean energy advocates to key positions in his Cabinet, made clean energy a cornerstone of his economic recovery package, and in his first major address before Congress last week, called for landmark legislation to cap global warming pollution.

Strong clean car standards

In addition, Obama has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider whether to allow California and more than a dozen other states, including New Jersey, to adopt strong clean car standards, a program the Bush administration had been blocking.

In announcing the action, the president stated, “This will help us create incentives to develop new energy that will make us less dependent on oil that endangers our security, our economy and our planet.”

Tomorrow, at a major hearing just outside Washington, D.C., the Environmental Protection Agency will do just that.

At issue is whether New Jersey and other states can implement clean cars programs to reduce global warming and promote advanced vehicle technologies, such as hybrids. New Jersey’s program would prevent 39.7 million metric tons of global warming pollution by 2020.

Tremendous savings

This amount is the equivalent of completely eliminating the pollution from more than 7.4 million cars for a year. The gas savings alone would save New Jersey residents more than $7.8 billion at the pump, even at today’s lower gas prices.

Fourteen states have already passed |the clean car program, and if all 50 states opted in, the global warming pollution savings by 2020 would reach the equivalent of eliminating the carbon dioxide pollution from all of the registered cars and light trucks in the country for an entire year and would save Americans $260 billion at the pump.

Obama has made clear his commitment to putting us on the road to a clean energy economy. The choice for Congress and the rest of America is also clear. We can help the president put millions of Americans to work building a clean energy future or stay the course with oil companies and other polluters that favor the status quo.

On Thursday, the EPA will hear from car industry executives who will undoubtedly assert that such regulations will toll the death knell for their industry. They’ve sung the same tune at every hearing over every regulation ever imposed on them going back to requiring that all cars have seatbelts.

In the meantime, the president points out that America has fallen behind in manufacturing of clean energy technologies. For instance, new plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders. It is time for America to lead again.

Ingenuity

The chance to employ American ingenuity to cut global warming pollution and make 21st century cars and light trucks comes none too soon.

Once again, average global temperatures are rising, with 2008 temperatures placing it as one of the 10 warmest years on record. All of the record-setting years for global temperature have occurred since 1997.

More and more Americans are realizing what the president clearly sees: that many of America’s challenges are connected to the failed energy policies of the past that have left us over-reliant on fossil fuels.

Dependence on oil, coal and natural gas for our energy pollutes our air and water, causes global warming and leaves our economy vulnerable to the price spikes of a global fuel market.

Allowing New Jersey to reduce global warming pollution from cars is one important step toward repowering America with clean energy and getting on track to solve global warming.

Doug O’Malley is the field director for Environment New Jersey. Environment New Jersey is a non-profit citizen advocacy organization based in Trenton.