The View from New York, By Ned Groth

Where does Obama stand on sustainability issues?

The very long US election campaign is finally over. Barack Obama is our president-elect. What does this mean for issues you and I care most about—food, agriculture, sustainable production methods, and environmental protection?

This result is most welcome, and urgently needed. The Bush Administration has been indifferent to or actively hostile toward sustainability policies, and if John McCain and Sarah Palin had been elected, things would not have improved much. But fortunately, Obama and Biden rode their promise of “fundamental change” to victory.

The Obama campaign’s positions on agricultural, food, energy, and sustainability issues were strong and progressive. That’s the good news. But the Obama Administration will have to clean up the colossal mess left by the Bush Administration. That’s the bad news. So, while we here are hopeful, we (and the rest of the world) must wait and see what our new leaders can accomplish.

Food and agricultural issues were rarely discussed in the campaign, which was focused (appropriately) on the Iraq war, the collapsing economy, and energy policy. But Senator Obama has addressed sustainabilty issues in clear positions laid out on his campaign web site (see www.barackobama.com).

Obama has developed thoughtful, well stated, and unambiguous positions on hundreds of issues. He articulates general themes of earth stewardship and the need to make sacrifices for future generations. Energy policy was a central theme of his campaign, and he vowed to build a new economy around clean, renewable technologies, by spending $150 billion on federal subsidies for clean energy over the next 10 years.

Obama’s policies on “rural issues” include a commitment to encourage organic and local agriculture, and to promote conservation of small family farms, wetlands, grasslands and forests. He promises to regulate pollution from “factory farms,” and is also likely to give a fair hearing to animal welfare concerns. He supports biofuels as a part of his renewable energy program, but would end government subsidies for ethanol production if using land for biofuels drives up food prices. He is intensely concerned about social justice and the need to reduce poverty, in the US and in developing countries.

Beyond his specific policy proposals, Obama seems to be a leader who will try to move America in directions that are best for Americans, for the world, and for the planet—not just for his party’s biggest campaign fund donors. He seems to want to gather good data on all dimensions of a problem, to hear arguments for different approaches, and to craft solutions from the best elements of differing proposals—a dramatic contrast to the anti-intellectual ideologues we have suffered under for the past 8 years. Obama and Biden are both strong supporters of science, and of federal funding for research.

I say “seems to,” because we will find out what kind of president Senator Obama will be as he starts acting as president—forming his cabinet, laying out detailed policy proposals and so on, during the transition period until his inauguration in January.

A great deal will depend on the men and women he chooses to head the key government agencies. But even with visionary leadership, making sustainability happen in America—at least in the short term—will be difficult.

To begin with, there are those wars—the one in Iraq, which Obama has pledged to end, and the one in Afghanistan, which he wants to pursue more effectively. He must focus on economic policy, and on restoring confidence of investors and consumers. Top priorities are also likely to include reforms of the tax code, educational and health care policy, all main themes of the campaign. Obama’s energy initiative is likely to be a keystone of his first year in office. But other environmental and agricultural initiatives will compete with many other problems for finite presidential attention and budgetary resources.

The Bush Administration has vastly overspent the federal budget. In the most recent year, with a $3 trillion budget, they overspent tax revenues by an estimated $500 billion. Our government is broke—because of politically popular but irresponsible tax cuts (mainly for the wealthy and corporations), combined with massive spending on the war, the Wall Street bailout and other Bush initiatives. The Republicans, going back to Ronald Reagan, have deliberately run up enormous deficits. They believe that government is inherently evil, and that starving it of money reduces its power to constrain free enterprise.

Those who believe in government’s power to do good—i.e., Obama and the Democrats in Congress—thus have huge obstacles to overcome. They face difficult choices: They must raise taxes, abandon some of their promised reforms, or cut other programs, all with their entrenched defenders, to find resources for new programs and initiatives.

In the struggle ahead, Obama will need masterful leadership, public support, and a little luck to succeed. Sustainability concerns are one of many areas where we must wait and see what he can accomplish. Most important, though, the long conservative Republican control of America’s direction has been decisively ended by the will of the people. On the issues we care most deeply about, in our current euphoric condition, based on his record and the policies he articulated in his campaign, our new president seems likely to be the most “tuned in” and committed leader on sustainability issues that America has ever had.

Boy, it’s about time. If we’re really fortunate, it’s not too late. And we’ll find out in time what new leadership can accomplish.

That’s my view from here in New York.

Feel free to respond to this column at info@schuttelaar.nl.

Ned Groth