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Obama talks about global warming on WMUR

-- brucebc -- 06/22/2007

Today, Sen. Barack Obama visited New Hampshire for a brief trip that included a taping of WMUR's "Conversation with the Candidate" series, that will be televised next week on WMUR TV, the ABC affiliate in NH and online at WMUR.com.  One participant in the audience was able to ask him a question about global warming:

"Global Warming is probably the most important environmental challenge civilization has faced.  the scientific consensus is that we face increasing disruptions through sea level rise, drought, floods, and massive storms.  It's clear we must take urgent action to reduce the projected temperature increases.  How aggressive will you be in demanding action to reduce greenhouse gasses?  How will you explain to Americans that fuels will cost more and they need to embrace energy conservation at a scale never before achieved...and what about fuel efficiency?"

In his response, Senator Obama talked about fuel-efficiency, saying Congress had made some progress yesterday in the Senate, but hadn't finished the job yet having passed a 35 MPG standard, but that he tried to make the law say that it would go up 4% every year...period. Additionally, he talked about renewable energy, capping carbon emissions (specifically he said the nation should set a cap, lowering it every year, ultimately by 2050 having 80% reductions), and creating tax-incentives for purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles and new appliances and insulating buildings.

At the end I was the last person he shook hands with and he was about to leave when I commented that I appreciated hearing him talking about global warming, but I'd love to hear him talk some about what he'd do about emissions from the many new coal-plants that were planned.  He was walking away and stopped, turned, and said, "Well, with a tough cap on emissions, they'd have to sequester the carbon," and then turned back to people taking pictures.

We'll link to the segment  after it runs on WMUR.