As Carl Pope wrote in a recent blog entry: "What a four weeks!" Congress and the Obama administration continue to deliver a steady stream of environmental milestones.
The best environmental good news came in response to economic bad news: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains approximately $80 billion in funding for promoting energy efficiency, renewable energy, and higher-mileage cars.
Specifically, that means:
- $25 billion for energy efficiency
- $20 billion for renewable energy incentives
- $11 billion in grants and $6 billion in loans to modernize the electric grid and increase its capacity to deliver power generated by renewable sources, and
- $17.7 billion for mass transit, Amtrak, and high-speed rail.
The significance of this funding for putting America on the path to a clean-energy economy can't be overstated.
The Obama administration also checked off another item from the list of "Clean Slate" actions that the Sierra Club suggested before the inauguration, when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson indicated that the agency will likely change course and begin regulating as pollutants the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. (Reconsidering an EPA clean-car waiver to California and other states was the first. See below.)
Then, just this week, a years-long stalemate on mercury emissions appears to have broken after the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued a statement saying, "The United States will play a leading role in working with other nations to craft a global, legally binding agreement that will prevent the spread of mercury into the environment."
Let's hope the good news keeps coming from Washington, D.C.
Yes, lets hope, fingers, toes, and eyes crossed! Just don't try to drive like that.
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