Platform & Record In-Depth
- Launched ReduceYourCarbon.com, which encourages Americans to decrease their own carbon emissions.
- Proposes creating at least 1 million "green-collar jobs" by investing in clean energy and energy-efficiency technology. Would also create 50,000 government-subsidized "green-collar stepping-stone jobs" that would train low-income and low-skill workers to move into promising career fields.
- Supports raising fuel-economy standards for automobiles to 40 miles per gallon by 2016. But in 2002, voted to exempt pickup trucks from higher CAFE standards.
- Supports a goal to get 25 percent of the U.S. electricity supply from renewable sources by 2025.
- Voted as having the best climate plan by members of MoveOn.org in July 2007.
- Would spend $1 billion a year helping U.S. automakers produce more clean, efficient, and biofuel-friendly vehicles, as part of the New Energy Economy Fund.
- Calls for producing 65 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2025. Would require oil companies to install ethanol pumps at 25 percent of their gas stations. Would require all new cars sold after 2010 to be flex-fuel vehicles that can run on either gasoline or a gasoline/biofuel mixture.
- Calls for eliminating $3 billion in annual government subsidies to oil companies, and says he is "very open to the possibility of an excess profits tax" on oil companies.
- Wants to meet demand for more electricity over the next decade through efficiency measures rather than through increased power production.
- Says a new international agreement on climate change must include China, India, and other developing nations. Has criticized the Bush administration for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol.
- Calls for a national goal to reduce oil imports by 7.5 million barrels a day by 2025, or nearly a third of the oil projected to be used in 2025.
- Would encourage local generation of electricity and allow small power producers to sell their excess power to the grid. Would require electric utilities to consider distributed generation as a means of lowering costs as compared to new investments in centralized production and transmission.
- Would cut the U.S. government's energy use by 20 percent and make the White House carbon-neutral.
- Would create a GreenCorps within AmeriCorps, in which young people would weatherize homes, install solar panels on homes, conduct energy audits, etc.
- Opposes oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
- Voted to store nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada in 2002. In 2004, when he joined John Kerry's presidential ticket, he changed his position to match Kerry's in opposing Yucca Mountain. He continues to oppose storing nuclear waste in Nevada.
- Supports a moratorium on concentrated animal-feeding operations.
- Proposes a moratorium on the construction and expansion of hog-farm lagoons and has said he would pursue better enforcement of current manure pollution laws.
- Supports expansion of farmland conservation programs.
- Introduced an amendment in 2003 that would have blocked the Bush administration from making changes to the "new-source review" program under the Clean Air Act; the admin's changes would let the power industry make major upgrades to facilities without installing the latest pollution-control equipment. The amendment was defeated.
- Cosponsor of the Clean Power Act of 2003, which would have required utilities to control emissions of carbon dioxide, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide.
- In 2002, voted to renew the Price-Anderson Act, which caps liability and the amount of money nuclear-power facilities would have to pay in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. The act was eventually renewed as part of the 2005 energy bill, extending liability protection to the nuke industry until the end of 2025.
- Voted in favor of an amendment to allow mountaintop-removal mining practices in 1999.
- In 2003, voted in favor of an amendment to the 2003 energy bill to increase fuel-economy standards for passenger cars to 40 mpg by 2014.
Still Haven't Gotten Enough?
- Read Grist's 2004 overview of Edwards' environmental record.
- Read Edwards' energy and environment platform on his campaign website.
- Read Edwards' official bio.
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