Just the Tree of Us

In the end, no president gets his program through Congress intact. The differences in emphasis and wording mean less at this stage than the emergence of environmentalism as a broad-based political force, rather than an elite preoccupation of people concerned about the effect of rising sea levels on beachfront property. Not long ago, African-American politicians talked about the environment mostly in terms of lead paint and inner-city air pollution. But Obama speaks about snorkeling the coral reefs in his native Hawaii, which are threatened by global warming. The industrial workers who are among Clinton's strongest supporters once regarded environmentalism as a plot to close their factories, but now rust-belt politicians like Michigan's Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Sen. Debbie Stabenow hope to attract "green collar" jobs building wind turbines. And tough-minded advocates of "energy independence," who once defined the problem in terms of drilling more oil wells on American soil and off American coastlines, now see conservation as an essential part of any solution. "Whoever is elected," says Berkeley's Kammen, "will need a pretty good energy plan as part of their first hundred days' agenda." The president Americans choose this fall will take office in 2009, the year in which a new international treaty on global warming is to be negotiated, replacing the expiring Kyoto Protocol. It will likely set the course of energy and technological change for the first half of the century, and if America wants to have a voice in the process, it must have leaders willing to engage in it. As matters appear now, it likely will.

With Daniel Stone in Washington and Karen Breslau In San Francisco

© 2008