The United States - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 48

1567 hunters enrolled. After 30 days, they had killed or captured 50 out of
an estimated 150,000 feral snakes. It was hopeless.
As a candidate in the Democratic Party primaries in 2008, Barack
Obama strongly supported biofuels, in particular ethanol, to be added
to gasoline. The program had begun in the Clean Air Act Amendments
of 1990 to reduce air pollution and to reduce American dependence on
imported petroleum. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007
was the latest version, in which Congress mandated adding 36 billion
gallons by 2022, up from 5 billion gallons at the time. Most of this came
from corn that the Department of Agriculture subsidized. The program
distorted farming in the Midwest, with acreage shifted from food to fuel.
Farmers, of course, loved it since the price went up even as production
went up. Indeed, the prices went so high that the prices of hogs and cattle
went up, raising meat prices for consumers. In Mexico, ordinary people
had to pay more for their cornmeal. The state of Iowa, in the middle of
the Corn Belt, holds the first event of the presidential primary season—a
caucus. Candidates from both parties flocked there, promising support for
ethanol. On the Democratic side, the most persuasive was Barack Obama,
who won, thus launching his eventual victory of the party's nomination.
As president he continued to support ethanol in the face of environmental
criticism that it was distorting the market and harming the land.
When Obama became president in 2009, he returned to policies more
in keeping with the usual Democratic lines of Carter and Clinton. Carol
Browner, Clinton's EPA head, was appointed to the White House staff with
a portfolio for energy and climate change. The new head of EPA was Lisa
Jackson, a 16-year veteran of the national agency, and more recently head
of the New Jersey state agency. The overriding question was how much
Obama would emphasize the environment when balanced against the
national financial crisis. His rhetoric was positive. He claimed the bail-
out of $850 billion would have green projects like eliminating toxic waste
dumps and saving energy by investing in photovoltaics and high mileage
automobiles. Yet a $30 billion infusion of cash into the auto Big Three was
not a logical match for reducing air pollution. SUVs are the most profitable
vehicle for the manufacturers. During the campaign Obama promised to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions but did not endorse the Kyoto Protocol.
Regarding methods, Obama urged entrepreneurial approaches to pol-
lution control, as the Bush administration had advocated. EPA seemed
unlikely to return to the Golden Age of regulation as in the Nixon and
Carter administrations. Furthermore, to the dismay of environmentalists,