US election- if you are still undecided, consider your supper table. Obama is listening
November 3, 2008
Could a stroll through the White House lawn someday look like this? Have you seen the "Farmer in Chief" article in the NYT? I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, but just heard Michael Pollan on NPR discussing it. And the Washington Post has written about it too. But are either Obama or McCain listening?
So far it seems that only Barack is paying attention. From an interview with Time Magazine, "I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation. In conversations with folks like Warren Buffet, Larry Summers, and the other people that I've been spending time with on this, I described it as we've got a boat with a lot of leaks and we need to get it into port. That's what the financial rescue package is about. But once we get it into port, once the credit markets are functioning effectively, then it's time for us to go back to the fundamentals of this economy."


Raul / November 3, 2008
I have the feeling that Obama “gets it” when it comes to sustainability. I am hopeful that US climate policy will change when he is elected.
Nadia / November 3, 2008
It is not only in the eloquence to which he speaks, it is the fact that he is attentive to these themes and has the ability to make it personal, while driving messages to the fundamentals of economy.
Now this only begs to question: If he were at my dinner table, what would I serve?
anthony / November 4, 2008
Raul- I am confident that he does and that climate policy will be tied in with energy and agriculture policy in a way that can really make an impact.
Nadia- It would depend on where and what season that you were eating in, right ;-)
Raul / November 6, 2008
Obama seems to me like a holistic-view kind of guy, so if he does what you mention (e.g. tie energy/agricultural policy with climate policy), he’ll definitely be in my good books for posterity.