Yale magazine: A Green Agenda for Obama's First 100 Days

Environmentalists offer the president-elect their advice on the priorities he should set for his administration.

Excerpts:

Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

I believe the most important initiative that President Obama should undertake would be to announce an ambitious plan for reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases on par with what the European Union has put forward — namely the 20-20-20 plan. This would require the U.S. to cut its emissions by 20 percent over 1990 levels, as well as generate 20 percent of its electricity through renewable energy sources, by 2020. Everything else would flow out of this set of goals, because business and industry would take immediate action in developing new technologies and refining existing ones to make them economically viable before 2020.

One major area in which the new President could bring about a major structural change would be to strengthen passenger railway transport in the U.S. by providing low interest loans to build high-speed lines that would lure passengers away from air travel. Simultaneously, the new administration must mandate stringent mileage standards to produce energy-efficient cars. States and local governments should be provided with financial support to carry out energy-efficiency retrofits in existing buildings and ensure much higher targets of energy efficiency in new construction.

The U.S. should also donate liberally to the adaptation fund that hopefully will be part of the new agreement on climate change to be negotiated by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen. Several poor countries that bear no responsibility for the increase in greenhouse gases will need major resources to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and as a matter of international justice, the U.S. must play a large role in these adaptation efforts.

I would tell the new President that all these measures would not only meet the challenge of climate change and establish the willingness of the U.S. to be part of the solution, but would also ensure energy security for the U.S. in the future and create much-needed new employment.