Our first green president?

 

by Barry Katz

In five days we will inaugurate our first African American president. It's momentous. It's historic. And it's about time.

Back in the early days of the primary campaign some black leaders raised the question, is Obama black enough. My only question is this - is he green enough.

I think he just may be. I sure hope so. I have watched with pleasure and relief at the science/climate/energy/environment team he has put in place and each appointment raised my level of optimism. Could Barack Obama really be our first green president?

We are faced with an historic opportunity. At no other time would it have been possible to get Congress to approve the kind of spending that could really jump-start the new clean green economy we so desperately need. Only a financial melt-down of current proportions can shake that kind of money from the tree.

It will take bold action and a lot of very smart decisions to make this work, and I'm waiting with bated breath to see if Obama and his team can pull it off. Back in December I wrote a post for my blog, The Future is Green entitled "What we need now" in which I suggested that this administration should be judged primarily on the extent to which the next four to eight years is devoted to energy and climate policy. In my mind, nothing else matters. Nothing else matters because everything else hinges on this.

I'll be watching.

Comments

[naturalenergyresources]

The President is nearly at the end of his first term. It will be interesting to see if his green side is stronger than his black side to get him re-elected.