Earth Equity News

Joe Environment. Posted by Kate Sheppard, Grist, August 23, 2008. "During his 35 years in the Senate, [Sen. Barack Obama's newly selected running mate, Sen. Joe] Biden has been most active on the Foreign Relations Committee, which he now chairs. But in that time he has also racked up a respectable environmental record, earning an 83% lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters... LCV noted that in 1986, Biden introduced the first bill designed to limit global warming pollution... In recent years, he has held Foreign Affairs Committee hearings on the national-security implications of global warming, and he teamed with Republican Sen. Dick Lugar to coauthor and pass out of that committee a resolution calling on the Bush administration to engage seriously in international climate negotiations... Like Obama, Biden has called for capping greenhouse-gas emissions at 80% below 1990 levels by 2050... signed on as a cosponsor of the [Boxer-Sanders global warming bill], the toughest climate bill in the Senate... called for a renewable portfolio standard... [and] been a vocal opponent of opening new areas of the country to oil and gas drilling... While campaigning for president, he called for fuel-economy standards for automobiles to be raised to 40 [mpg] by 2017, and said he would require the federal government to purchase only automobiles that get at least 40 mpg. He called for federal spending of $100 million a year on [R&D] in lithium-ion batteries [for] plug-in hybrids. Along with Obama, he was a cosponsor of... a measure to raise vehicle fuel-efficiency standards by 4% each year and provide tax incentives for automakers to update their factories in order to achieve this goal. In 2007, he sponsored... [legislation to] support R&D on electric car motors and batteries. Biden has also been a strong supporter of biofuels... Biden and Obama have differed on a few environmental issues. Biden voted against the 2005 Energy Policy Act, a sweeping, oil-friendly energy bill that enviros largely opposed; Obama voted for it, citing its support for ethanol and 'clean coal' technology. Biden has been much less enthusiastic than Obama about 'clean coal,' [saying]... 'I don't think there's much of a role for clean coal in energy independence' -- though he did note that advanced coal technology could be important in other nations like China."