MISSION ENVIRONMENT Take Action Now and Save the Environment

During the days following Super Tuesday, we have lost a few candidates - Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards, we have seen harsh battles between the two democratic candidates, and we have basically seen John McCain lock up the Republican Nomination. We can safely say that there are three candidates left that could possibly be elected president - Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Between the blog article written in January on McCain and the fact that he is practically the Republican Candidate, I bet most people assume he is the best choice for the Republicans for office - but what about the environment?

Recently, there was a vote in the Senate that would ultimately have boosted investment in green technology. It failed by a slim margin. McCain was not present to vote, which now makes his attendance record hovering around 50% since his campaign began - much lower then any of his fellow candidates. Is it old age? Possibly. Is it lack of motivation to help the environment? Maybe. Is he still a good choice for the environment? To a certain extent, yes, but to a much lesser degree.

So who is the best choice between Hillary and Barack? They both have similar plans on the environment, so how do we distinguish who would be the best candidate? We must analyze the details.

Barack Obama has a cheaper and more effective healthcare plan. Not only does this show us that he is more fiscally responsible, but is means he trusts and understands how the market works, which will be very important to become energy independent with renewable energy. It also means he has extra money to pay off our national debt and invest a little more in education and green technology.

Hillary Clinton still received money from corporate interests. How does this effect our decision? Well, think back to the last election. Bush and Cheney received money from interests in the oil industry. During their two terms, we fought a war over oil, price of oil went up dramatically, oil companies produced record profits while at the same time receiving tax credits, subsidies and other benefits. Surprise? No. Do we want this to happen again? Absolutely not. Now, we are not saying Hillary Clinton takes money from oil companies, but it is the principal of details. See the videos in the John Edwards post to see her response to receiving money from lobbyists.

There are many other reasons we feel Barack Obama is the candidate for the environment, just like Grist.org feels, as well as many other environmental groups. We have opened up the comments section in this blog, so feel free to post your opinions.

As the race for the presidency tightens and we near the finish, we start to learn a lot about not just the issues of each candidate, but the background of their reasoning and important, personal issues that they feel are most important to the country. Enters John Edwards.

John Edwards’ biggest issue is pork barrel spending, earmarks, and Lobbyist control of our government. He has never taken money from a Washington Lobbyist his entire career. What is a lobbyist? In a summarization, a lobbyists is a paid official of a corporation to lobby for laws and regulations in favor of his corporation. What is the problem with lobbyists? Basically, they can disregard the public welfare in order to look out for the special interests of his corporation. Think of oil companies, insurance companies, drug companies, etc. We will go more in-depth about lobbyists in a future post.

Sure, Obama hasn’t taken money from lobbyists this entire election campaign either, but John Edwards is making it a central issue to his campaign, most likely to try and derail Hillary Clinton, who is an advocate of lobbyists and vouched to continue to receive money from them.

Why is this an issue of the environment and energy policy? Basically, the more power the oil companies and automobile companies have in Washington, the more pressure they will put on elected officials whom they donated money to to support bills and laws that would not place pressure on their companies. For instance, do you think an elected official who received money from oil companies would pass laws that would increase MPG for cars or increase spending on renewable resources? In a perfect world, the donations they received would not effect their decision, but in reality, it does.

For your viewing pleasure, I have attached a few videos of John Edwards and Hillary Clinton on their opinions of lobbyists in Washington.

John McCain is one of the only Republican Candidates that has showed an honest concern for the environment as well as viable solutions to the problem. He is the only Republican Candidate that has supported a Cap-and-Trade system for polluters - in fact, he has cosponsored Joe Lieberman’s Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007 - again the only Republican Candidate to do so. This type of action goes against traditional “conservative” economics, but McCain has enough fiscal understanding to make it work, as well as the environmental understanding that it must be done. John McCain also supports raising the standards of automobiles, although he as not yet stated a specific goal. In 2002, he did vote to raise standards to 36mpg by 2016 - this was before everyone else jumped on the environmental bandwagon.

He supports alternative energy, specifically nuclear for the short term, but remains optimistic about wind and solar once the technologies catch up. He also supports biofuels but does not support subsidies for ethanol. He also supports clean coal.

McCain uses a blend of conservative economic plans with environmental protection. The main difference between Obama and McCain is that Obama wants to invest $150 billion in alternative energy to spur economic growth and innovation, while McCain wants to use economic incentives. Depending on your political beliefs, you must choose the right candidate for you. Here at Mission Environment, we fully support Barack Obama, but if you want to vote republican, McCain is also a viable choice and we do approve of his environmental policies. Below we post a few of McCain’s interviews and speeches regarding energy and environmental policy:

Here at Mission Environment, we publicly support presidential candidates in which have proven that they will undoubtedly help the environment and our addiction to foreign oil. Obama has definitely shown he is worthy, as well as John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani. We will blog about them all and show you where they stand. We will also show you candidates in which we do not support due to some statements they have made and some actions they have taken.

To begin our review of the candidates, we will talk about Barack Obama, the young, exciting, educated, and intelligent Democratic candidate. Out of all the Democratic candidates, he has vowed to make the largest national investment in alternative energy - such as solar, wind, geothermal - for $150 billion over 10 years. Not only will this help our energy independence and global warming issues, it will also spur economical growth through increase in jobs and markets. He plans to pay for this with the expiration of the Bush Tax cuts, as well as raise the capital gains marginal tax rate. We did fine raising the taxes during the 90s under Bill Clinton, and we will be fine again with Obama.

Obama also supports Cap & Trade to cut emission 80% below 1990 levels by 2020, raising automobile standards to 40mpg for cars and 32mpg for small trucks by 2020, getting 30% of our national energy from renewable resources by 2020, to have 60 billion gallons of biofuel produced each year in the USA by 2030, supports clean coal only if 20% cleaner then current methods, and supports nuclear power. For your entertainment, we have also posted some short videos of Obama speaking at various venues. If you would like to learn more about Obama, you can search YouTube.com or go to http://www.barackobama.com/