> These platforms are pretty hard to find. The presidential campaigns have better documents:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/da151a1c-733a-4dc1-9cd3-f9ca5caba1de.htm http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf A few cooments: 1. On cap and trade John McCain gives much more detail, notably targets for 2012 and 2020, and info on whether he'll allow banking of allowances to deal with excessive price volatility. Obama has a bigger target, 80% by 2050, but that's also the only date for which there is a target, leaving us somewhat in the dark about the near term. They both want to aution all the allowances, Obama right from the start, McCain eventually. Both Obama and McCain want to use some of the money for clean energy research and demonstration, and want to return some of it to poorer Americans. Obama gives a Dollar amount figure for auction income reserved for clean energy of 15 billion. If memory serves right that puts a floor of two Dollar fifty on a metric tonne of CO2, as US emissions are of the order of 6 billion metric tonnes of CO2. 2. I found Obama's Green Vets proposal somewhat weird. Why does he want to train Iraq war veterans so that they can enter the renewable energy field? Why especially veterans? Shouldn't the people install wind turbines who are best at it, are keenest on choosing such a career? 3. It's interesting that Obama specifically mentions the Alaska gas pipeline as a key priority, and moans that this project was first proposed in 1976 and that the Bush administration has made no progress on it. 4. Obama has much more detail on fuel economy and biofuels (60 billion gallons by 2030), areas McCain hardly mentions. Bush has a target of 35 billion gallons by 2017. What neither contains is research and market development money for better bicycles, which would be high up my wish list. I am talking about this kind of entirely human powered vehicle that's significantly faster than ordinary bicycles http://www.sunrider-cycles.com/foto-video/index.php which I'd love to buy (certainly if it sold for less than 4900). I'd say this a classical case of a market failure, where there is no market because small series production and development costs are too high, and where the state could create one given enough initial incentives. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
