California Coast & Ocean

It is hard not to get my hopes up. I was unexpectedly moved by Barack Obama's election as president. I say unexpectedly because I think of myself as a hard-bitten political cynic, and during the last two months of the election campaign I was practically living on the polling websites. ("I'll be up in a minute honey. I just need to take a look at a brand-new Quinnipic poll on left-handed decline-to-state-voters in South Dakota.") As my liberal friends became increasingly fearful of an October surprise, convinced that something bad would happen to derail the Obama train, I actually became more and more sure of the Democratic landslide to be.

Despite expecting Obama to win, like millions of Americans I teared up during his acceptance speech, thrilled by a President-elect who spoke to all that is best about the United States of America, and did so in complete paragraphs. Now, as I write, we are in the interregnum period peculiar to American government, waiting for our lame-duck President to get out of the way so our new President can take office. What will the future bring? How will the new administration deal with the enormous backlog of issues and problems facing the nation?

Pretty much everyone working in conservation and the environment will breathe a huge sigh of relief when the Bush family decamps for Texas. The Bush administration has been by far the worst presidency in history as far as our land, water, and air are concerned. Not to mention the food we eat, medicines we take, cars we drive, and so on. In particular, we have lost eight years in the battle against climate change. Over the course of two terms, President Bush not only took no meaningful action to deal with carbon dioxide emissions, but actually prevented states from doing anything and gave India and China a perfect excuse for inaction.

President-elect Obama has made it clear that things would be different in his administration. I certainly hope it's true, but I can't help but remember our last Democratic administration, that of President Clinton. In most respects that was a good time for the environmental community (for many of us it was the good old days). Bona fide environmental leaders were running things in the federal government, and a great deal of good work was accomplished. Clinton created the President's Council on Sustainable Development, signed the Kyoto Protocol (although he did not submit the treaty to the Senate), and after the 1994 elections stood firm against Republican attempts to roll back environmental laws and regulations through the appropriations process. During the Clinton administration, the EPA's budget was increased, and many of the country's natural resources were put under greater protection. President Clinton issued an executive order to require polluters to disclose information to the public, expanded the public's right to know about toxic releases, and signed the California Desert Protection Act in 1994.

Nevertheless, the Clinton administration was unable to do anything significant about climate change. They certainly tried; there was, for instance, an ill-fated attempt at a tax on the carbon content of fuels, shot down in Congress in the first term. The United States never did ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and President Bush has been able to undo by executive order some things Clinton did by executive order.

Still, there is reason to believe that this time things will be different. Not just because both candidates for president talked about climate change during the campaign, and not just because Obama mentioned it during his acceptance speech. The fact that Democrats picked up seats in Congress in two election cycles back to back will certainly be helpful, but what I suspect will prove to be most helpful in the years ahead is that public opinion has shifted.

During the last five or six years, increasing numbers of Americans have told pollsters that they believe climate change is happening, and that they are able to observe changes where they live, and where they camp or hunt and fish. The scientific consensus on climate change and the dangers it poses is now deafening, and $4-per-gallon gasoline gave us a taste of what things will be like after world oil production has peaked. And of course a key moment of the Bush presidency, and the beginning of the end of Bush's approval ratings, was the loss of New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina.

I have something in common with President-elect Obama. I started my career as a community organizer too. In fact, my basic training in politics and campaigns came from working for ACORN in Boston many summers ago. Barack Obama clearly thinks like a community organizer, and campaigned like a community organizer. One thing community organizers learn early on: you must begin where people are. That is to say, you can't convince them to be concerned about things that they are not concerned about, or believe things that they don't believe. Good organizers know what is important to their communities, and help them achieve it.

I said at the beginning that I'm trying not to be too optimistic. And yet, beginning in January, we will have a President who understands that climate change is an enormous threat, who has said that he wants to do something about it, who seems to have the skills to mobilize our country, whose citizens seem ready, finally, to embrace some change. I will try to keep my enthusiasm under control.