Joe Biden.
Photo: senate.gov
Barack Obama's running mate will be Joe Biden.
Here's a fact sheet on Biden's environmental record.
Grist interviewed Biden in August 2007, when he was running for president. He said this about dealing with climate change:
To deal with global warming, you have to change the attitude of the world, particularly China and India, the two largest developing nations. But in order to do that, to have any credibility, you have to begin here in the United States by capping emissions, increasing renewable fuels, establishing a national renewable portfolio standard, requiring better fuel economy for automobiles. I would cap emissions at 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and set a national RPS of 20 percent. I would announce an executive order that the federal government would not purchase one single automobile for its fleet that gets less than 40 miles to the gallon. And I would not build a single solitary federal project without it being a green project. That would have the effect of getting states to do the same thing, and that would create a pot of somewhere between a third and a half a trillion dollars that would be a lure to every major business in America to go green.
Biden had this to say about "clean coal":
I don't think there's much of a role for clean coal in energy independence, but I do think there's a significant role for clean coal in the bigger picture of climate change. Clean-coal technology is not the route to go in the United States, because we have other, cleaner alternatives. But I would invest a considerable amount of money in research and development of clean-coal and carbon-sequestration technologies for export. China is building one new coal-fired plant per week. That's not going to change unless there's a fundamental change in technology, because they have about 300 years of dirty coal, and they're going to use it.
Would you impose a moratorium on the development of old-style coal power plants in the U.S.?
I believe that all new coal-fired power plants should be built with carbon capture and sequestration capacity.
He had this to say about ethanol:
Ethanol is a good start. Because of the amount of [resources] that go into producing corn-based ethanol, it has only marginally less impact on the consumption of fossil fuels. But it has two real advantages: it begins to give us the margin of flexibility we need to deal with being held hostage to any one of the seven unstable countries that supply 35 percent of our oil -- Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, etc. No. 2, it's a transitional means by which you're going to be pouring billions of dollars into the fields of the Midwest, rather than the sands of Saudi Arabia or the pockets of Chavez.
Biden has a lifetime score of 83 from the League of Conservation Voters (Obama's is 86).
The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’
Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 1:34 am
23 Aug 2008
Biden:
"Congress should not lift the ban on offshore oil drilling."
"A Gift To The Oil Companies"
http://whereistand.com/JoeBiden/944
Obama:
"U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said today he would be willing to open Florida's coast for more oil drilling..."
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/01/1242440 ...
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Steven T Posted 1:59 am
23 Aug 2008
McCain has become a caricature of his long-standing image as a free-thinking maverick. I wouldn't be surprised if he selects Romney as his running mate. That guy has an even more impressive record of saying whatever he thinks it will take to get elected.
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Jonas Posted 2:33 am
23 Aug 2008
But the U.S. is perhaps still too Anglosaxon protestant today for them to stand a chance.
Let's not forget that the last Catholic to make it into the White House was JFK.
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GreenMom Posted 3:47 am
23 Aug 2008
Joe Biden's not diversity. His roots are blue collar and working class. He's Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. He's about as salt of the earth as it gets.
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HealthyHiker Posted 4:10 am
23 Aug 2008
Delaware has one of the highest cancer rates in North America- pollution being the main culprit for this. How are state leaders resolving this public health problem?
Delaware is being developed to death. Large corporate developers and builders are having a field day in Delaware buying up every farm and forest possible to build Mc Mansions, shopping centers, and office parks. Have you driven around the state lately? It is a mess and it's drinking water is deteriorating because of this unsustainable land use.
Delaware parks require payment for every visit- even a 30 minute hike. How does that encourage people reconnect with nature?
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GreenMom Posted 5:01 am
23 Aug 2008
Joe Biden is not responsible for development in Delaware. He's a SENATOR. He's on the Foreign Relations Committee. That's national. He's not responsible for zoning, or parks, or any other issue specific to Delaware.
Plus, I don't think he takes money from developers, so really he has NO moreconnection to local issues than any other schmo in Wilmington.
It's not his thing, dude.
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hapa Posted 7:00 am
23 Aug 2008
a senator from delaware would have insider ties to the credit industry that the veep wouldn't have to keep up
outside the bush-cheney white house, the veep doesn't set bank policy
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Jason D Scorse Posted 8:00 am
23 Aug 2008
And people, don't indulge jabailo, he's probably on the GOP payroll- just revel in the comedy that he/she provides freely to us all.....
We need to focus on the root causes of problems. http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Paleocon Posted 9:09 am
23 Aug 2008
Reasoned debate? No.
We are slack-jawed, trailer park livin' inbreds.
Spawned to be taxed.
Keep it up.
I am sure Obama will win.
"...a 90 percent chance that the US has contributed .2 degrees F of temperature increase in the last 50 years..." The IPCC Consensus in perspective
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Jason D Scorse Posted 10:08 am
23 Aug 2008
We need to focus on the root causes of problems. http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Jonas Posted 9:08 pm
23 Aug 2008
If McCain chooses another circumspect white Anglosaxon protestant, he can't lose - according to their statistical analyses.
I hope they're wrong, but the evidence seems to be rather solid.
In any case, as the U.S. keeps getting more Latinized (i.e. populated by Catholics and/or Latinos), the situation will obviously change in favor of non-Anglosaxons, non-protestant democrats and the world will be a better place. But the demographics point out that it still takes a few decades to get there.
So I do hope all these analyses are wrong. I've always like Biden, I often watch his committee at work, on C-Span.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:10 am
24 Aug 2008
Faithbased voters, cheap labor,and cannon fodder! Your most important features to the neoconservative multinational corporate empire that operates the strings of the various puppet regimes like this Bush administration.
Taxes! They don't need no steenkeen taxes. They have (almost) ALL the money.
Fees, that's what they use. Charging wounded vets for their daily food while recovering in the hospital. That sort of thing. Hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Tasermons Partner Posted 12:46 pm
24 Aug 2008
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GreenMom Posted 1:45 pm
24 Aug 2008
Also, people decided they couldn't relate to him. Have you heard him speak? He's quite boring. And I say that as someone who knocked on doors for him in 2004; nevertheless, he was a lousy candidate (but probably would have made a fine president).
Realizing you are not American explains to me how you could accept the analysis you have heard. So I apologize for thinking you obtuse.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:00 pm
24 Aug 2008
Kerry came very close, despite his tendency to ramble incoherently when questioned, only the failure to litigate the results in Ohio lost it for him. Why didn't the teams of lawyers assembled act? There was certainly plenty of evidence of vote fraud. And the precedent of Florida in 2000.
There's a mystery for historians. Why didn't democratic party leaders insist that lawyers act to save the nation from four more years of bushwacking?
No reform of the voting procedures and oversight has occured in the mean time. Even though the methods to manipulate the paperless machines by preprogramming has been widely publicized.
Another tactic in Ohio was simply moving voting machines from democratic favored polling places so that voters had 6 to 8 hour waits to vote. Or closing polling places early on flimsy excuses, like running out of pencils.
This election is in grave danger too. Obama needs a huge margin to beat the cheat factor.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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caniscandida Posted 5:25 pm
24 Aug 2008
The problem with Catholics, though, is that those of them who are more socially conservative (Catholics are all over the place, politically and socially, and should not be considered anything like a monolithic voting bloc) have lately been preferring Republican candidates, starting with Ronald Reagan in 1980. Catholic ethnic voters once upon a time were a solid part of FDR's coalition, and were reliably part of the Democratic base for a few decades; but somehow the Democratic party lost the support of many of them in the 1970s. According to one analysis of the 2004 election, John Kerry lost because conservative Catholics in Ohio swung that swing state toward George W. Bush.
In the case of Joe Biden, it will be interesting to see how his support of abortion rights plays out. Catholics in general are as likely to support abortion rights and Roe v. Wade as the population as a whole; but needless to say, the leadership firmly oppose them. In 2004, a couple of horse's-ass bishops made public statements to the effect that they would not give Holy Communion to John Kerry, should he attend a Mass in their cathedrals, because of his support of abortion rights. One of these happens to have been Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, a real krank-o-rama. With the Democratic convention right there on his doorstep, we should not be surprised if he makes some unfriendly pronouncement regarding Joe Biden.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 5:39 pm
24 Aug 2008
http://www.newsmeat.com/ceo_political_donations/Frank_Per ....
Still, Biden may have felt no inclination to do anything about regulating chicken CAFOs, for much the same reason that Obama of Illinois has tried to say nice things now and again about coal.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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