Obama acts on energy and climate as stimulus streaks through Congress

President Obama wasted no time in making good on campaign pledges, reversing or accelerating energy and climate-change policies made by his predecessor. On Monday, Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its rejection last December of California’s 7-year-old petition to allow the state to regulate tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide. More than a dozen other states have indicated that they will adopt California’s CO₂ standard. Obama ordered the EPA to publish a rule by the end of March.

Obama also directed Ray LaHood, the newly confirmed secretary of transportation, to draw up tougher mileage requirements for cars and light trucks, which would begin in 2011 and mandate a corporate average fuel economy of at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The current CAFÉ is set at 27.5 mpg, and the Bush administration did not finalize a new standard before Bush left office.

Not all of the week’s action on climate change took place at the White House. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named Washington lawyer Todd Stern as chief negotiator on climate change, a post that was held during the Bush administration by Harlan Watson. Stern will lead the US negotiating team on a United Nations treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2013.

Former vice president Al Gore kept the heat on lawmakers, urging his former Senate colleagues to not allow the economic crisis to stall action on climate change. He called for Congress to act this year to institute a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile last week, a gargantuan spending and tax relief package aimed at propping up the nation’s economy continued moving through Congress with breathtaking speed. The full House approved an $819 billion stimulus bill that would heap more than $40 billion onto the $25 billion Department of Energy, including $2 billion--an increase of more than more than 50%--for DOE’s Office of Science, which is the biggest federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences. The House bill, which did not receive a single Republican vote, also would swell the NSF budget by 50%, or $3 billion, with $2 billion of that devoted to fundamental research and engineering. The bulk of the new DOE money would be for R&D and loan guarantees aimed at accelerating the adoption of renewable and other non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, for capturing and sequestering carbon from coal-generation, and for accelerating cleanup of the former nuclear weapons production complex. Billions more are included for other science agencies, including $3.5 billion for the National Institutes of Health.

Appropriators in the Senate approved their stimulus spending measure , with considerably smaller numbers for basic science. DOE’s basic science program would get only $430 million, with all but $100 million specified for infrastructure and construction at the national laboratories. NSF would receive $1.4 billion in stimulus funds. But the Senate measure would provide more for NASA and NOAA --$1.5 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively--than the House bill.

Upon Senate passage, the final numbers will be hashed out by a House-Senate conference committee, with the compromise measure put to a vote in both chambers. Democratic leaders have pledged to send a bill for the president’s signature by mid-February.

David Kramer