FIRST THINGS FIRST….The first thing any new president does is to reverse his predecessor’s rules on support for international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid. As part of this tradition, Obama will be rescinding Bush’s regulation, which itself was a change from Clinton’s policy, which in turn was a repudiation of the original rule put in place by Ronald Reagan. Starting January 20th, the mere mention of the word “abortion” will no longer make you ineligible for American aid.
But that’s not all. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal all ran stories over the weekend about the hundreds of other Bush-era executive orders Obama plans to overturn as soon as he’s in office, and John Podesta was on TV Sunday morning saying the same thing, which means that this is pretty obviously something the Obama team is eager for the world to hear about.
So what’s on tap? Changes to federal funding rules for stem cell research (which makes California’s stem cell initiative from a couple of years ago redundant — thanks, initiative process!), some drilling decisions near national parks, and several other things. The most interesting one, however, is probably this:
The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. “Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer,” Obama said in January.
California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California’s rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation’s automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.
….Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.
This, along with an EPA that decided to obey the law and classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant, could have extremely far-reaching effects. Pair them up with something close to the energy policy that Obama campaigned on and it would finally send a message to the world that the United States is no longer in denial about global warming.
And not a moment too soon. Julia Whitty explains why here.
