Hillary Clinton, Presidential Candidate

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Hillary Clinton's stated positions:

• Greenhouse gas emissions:  Wants a cap and trade system to cut CO2 emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050
• Fuel Efficiency standards:  Supports increasing to 55 MPG by 2030
• Renewable Energy:  Wants this to comprise 25% of US electricity by 2025
• Biofuels:  Wants at least 60 billion gallons of biofuels in the fuel supply by 2030
• Coal:  Supports coal-to-liquid fuels if they emit 20% less carbon than conventional gas
• Nuclear:  Agnostic
• LCV (League of Conservation Voters) Rating:  90
• Emphasizes the creation of "green-collar jobs" in the fields of clean energy and energy efficiency. Aims to create up to 5 million clean-energy jobs over the next decade.
• Made her campaign carbon-neutral in April 2007, one month after John Edwards did.
• Platform & Record In-Depth
  
  • Supports reducing electricity consumption 20 percent from projected levels by 2020 through phaseout of incandescent light bulbs and other efficiency standards.

     

  • Advocates for 60 billion gallons of homegrown biofuels to be available for use in vehicles by 2030.

     

  • Says she is "agnostic" on nuclear power, having "real concerns" about the power source in general and the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York state in particular. She has pointed out that nuclear plants could be a target for terrorist attacks.

     

  • Opposes the storage of nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain repository being built in southern Nevada.

     

  • Opposes oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

     

  • Supports requiring publicly traded companies to disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission the risks climate change poses to their business.

     

  • A cosponsor of the Boxer-Sanders Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, the most stringent climate bill in the Senate.

     

  • Wants to create an energy-research agency modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

     

  • Has suggested that the federal government could help cover health-care costs for retired U.S. autoworkers in exchange for automakers producing more fuel-efficient cars, an idea Barack Obama has been pushing.

     

  • Took a tour of Alaska in 2005 to see the on-the-ground impacts of climate change.

     

  • Has been an active member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during her whole tenure in the Senate.

     

  • Calls for a Green Building Fund through which the federal government would allocate $1 billion annually to states to make grants or low-interest loans to improve energy efficiency in public buildings, such as schools, police stations, firehouses, and offices.

     

  • Sponsor of the Zero-Emissions Building Act, which would require new federal buildings and major renovations to be carbon-neutral by 2030, and to have gradually reduced emissions in the years before then.

     

  • Voted against the final version of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, a sweeping, oil-friendly energy bill opposed by enviros, because she said it "ignores our biggest energy challenges, subsidizes mature energy industries like oil and nuclear, and rolls back our environmental laws." The act passed and Bush signed it into law in August 2005.

     

  • Introduced the Coordinated Environmental Health Network Act in 2004 and again in 2005, which would have helped orchestrate federal health-agency cooperation and provide public access to an electronic database of chronic diseases and relevant environmental factors. The bill went nowhere both times, but Clinton said she has plans to reintroduce it.

     

  • In 2005, cosponsored the Child, Worker, and Consumer-Safe Chemicals Act, which would have mandated greater scrutiny of new and existing chemicals, offered market incentives for developing safer alternatives to toxics, and created a publicly accessible database with info on the toxicity of chemicals on the market.

     

  • Successfully lobbied [PDF] the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to let International Paper conduct a two-week test burn of tires at a mill in upstate New York in 2005. The burn was so polluting that the company had to suspend it after a few days.

     

  • When asked what she would do as president to address water and land issues in the U.S. West, Clinton said she would emphasize renewable energy, protect national parks and wilderness areas, reform the Mining Law of 1872, and employ a more balanced approach than the Bush administration to traditional energy development on public lands.

     

  • Cosponsored the Clean Power Act in 2001, which proposed requiring power plants to significantly reduce harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and carbon dioxide. The bill did not move forward nor pass.

     

  • 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.
     
•  More Facts:   http://grist.org/feature/2007/08/09/clinton_factsheet/
• Interview:  http://grist.org/feature/2007/08/09/clinton/
• Press:  http://www.grist.org/cgi-bin/search.pl?query=Hillary+Clinton
• Video:   http://grist.org/feature/2007/08/09/clinton_factsheet/index.html#video1