Opinion, Berkeley Blogs

Great expectations: A dozen views of Obama's second term

By Dan Farber

As we approach inauguration day next month, I thought it would be interesting to pull together the advice that people are giving him about his second term.

Here are some links if you’re interested in what people are hoping for (or in some cases, dreading):

  • From the N.Y. Times, the views of Carol Browner (advocating more use of natural gas and a federal-state partnership to regulate fracking) and Christine Todd Whitman (climate change should be front and center).
  • What EcoNews recommends (a stronger stance against fossil fuels).
  • ThinkProgress‘s views (three steps on climate change, including action against non-CO2 greenhouse gases).
  • Here’s what Mother Jones hopes for (positive action on eight important pending regulations).
  • And Rolling Stone (including new weather satellites and  funding for geoengineering research).
  • The American Enterprise Institute predicts disastrous overregulation.
  • Grist focuses on food systems.
  • The NRDC has an ambitious suggestion on how Obama could use the Clean Air Act to limit carbon from existing sources.
  • The Executive Director of the Sierra Club wants more solar and wind, less oil, and more use of the Antiquities Act to protect public lands.
  • Eric Pooley of EDF wants Obama to pursue a business-friendly plan to reduce climate change.
  • Cato calls on Obama to “rethink his failing energy policy for one premised on free markets, consumer sovereignty and deficit-reduction.”
  • Greenpeace, on the other hand, is “cautiously hopeful that in his second term he will use more of his political capital to advance the climate change agenda at home, but also globally.”
  • Cross-posted from the environmental law and policy blog Legal Planet.