Will Hillary Clintons Wealth Be a 2016 Liability?
July 21 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg #39;s Lisa Lerer examines Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earning twelve million dollars in the past sixteen months and if she will be able to...
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Will Hillary Clintons Wealth Be a 2016 Liability? - Video
Hillary Clinton's appearance at a clean energy convention in Las Vegas on Thursday night turns attention to yet another aspect of the likely Democratic presidential candidate's policy platform for 2016: energy. As usual (and perhaps to her detriment), Clinton is not expected to actually delineate any specific policy goals on energy production. But if she did, it's safe to assume we know what she would say. There's no reason to think Clinton's positions on energy have, in the main, changed since 2008. If anything, they've shifted to the ideological right slightly.
The event is not set up to challenge Clinton on the subject. As Politico noted, it's a forum largely organized by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and she'll be interviewed by John Podesta -- a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and current advisor to President Obama. She will not take questions from the media. None of this is unusual; Clinton's insistence on a smooth ride at such convenings is central to her pre-campaign campaign.
But even if the event wasn't set up to be a breeze for Clinton, where would the challenge come? In November 2007, the last time she was expected to be the Democratic nominee for the presidency, Clinton spoke to an audience in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, outlining her campaign platform on the subject. Then, as now, discussion of energy meant a discussion of the environment. In her Cedar Rapids speech, Clinton outlined her policy goals, which we'll slightly paraphrase:
And there you go. An energy platform perfect for 2008. And, for environmental purists, 2016.
This platform didn't differ too much from that of candidate Barack Obama. When President Barack Obama started trying to make it real -- or, at least, started trying to make parts of it real -- he encountered a number of challenges. Cap and trade died in the Senate in 2010. Obama introduced limits on carbon pollution earlier this year -- at a more modest rate of 30 percent by 2030. Working with auto manufacturers, the president created a 54.5 mpg efficiency standard by 2025, perhaps the clearest example of a climate success in his first term.
But after watching carbon dioxide emissions fall over his first term -- thanks in part to a sinking economy -- they ticked up again in 2013. Obama's broad support for renewable energy became a toxic political proposition, particularly after the collapse of Solyndra. Use of renewables, despite a boom in wind turbine production and solar, comprised about 11 percent of America's electricity production in 2013, according to the Energy Information Administration. In 1990, renewables comprised 10 percent.
That's because of the yellow line on the graph above: natural gas. Obama's overseen a big drop in the import of foreign oil for the same reason that more electricity is being produced from natural gas: the boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the upper Plains states.
That process has introduced new environmental concerns which Hillary '08 didn't need to consider. Fracking, as you're likely aware, has been linked towater pollution, largely thanks to the pressurized, in-ground storage systems used to dispose of waste water from fracking operations. It's been linked to earthquakes. Andthe extraction process itself releases natural gas into the atmosphere -- methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It's not clear how much methane leaks from drilling operations, but environmentalists (and some researchers) aren't sure the reduction in carbon dioxide gained by burning gas instead of coal is worth the methane leaks.
At MSNBC, Alex Seitz-Wald notes that the question of fracking is one of two new energy-environment issues to have arisen since Clinton last ran for president. The other is the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed system for shunting a form of oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast that has become a centerpiece of environmental activism. The State Department holds approval/veto authority over the pipeline since it crosses an international border. When Clinton was Secretary of State, she punted on an approval decision, almost certainly at the behest of her boss, President Obama. If Obama doesn't resolve the situation before 2016 heats up -- which seems unlikely, but who knows -- Clinton will need to take a position.
Which brings us to the politics. In 2008, Clinton had a very progressive view on the environment and on energy. That was a function of two things. First, public attitudes on climate change were more receptive to direct action (like that massive 80 percent drop in CO2 emissions). That openness to reform was partly because Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was still fresh in the public consciousness. (In 2008, Republican nominee Sen. John McCain also backed cuts to carbon emissions -- deeper cuts than Obama's recent proposal.)
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Hillary Clinton is likely to be more conservative on energy policy in 2016 than she was 8 years ago
Likely presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie are playing to their energy industry constituents this week, albeit from opposite ends of the spectrum. Clinton will speak to a group of "clean energy" leaders Thursday afternoon in Las Vegas, while Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, is appealing to oil and gas developers.
Clinton, a Democrat, and Christie have yet to formally declare their intentions to vie for the U.S. presidency in 2016. (Nor has anyone else.) But both are considered likely contenders and are assumed to be laying the groundwork for campaigns.
Clinton, the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state, will deliver the keynote speech at Thursdays Clean Energy Summit, a daylong event hosted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. (The speech will be broadcast live at 3:50 p.m. PDT.)
Her remarks are likely to resonate with crucial constituencies in the renewable energy and liberal ranks, people active in both groups told Politico this week. Supporters hope Clinton will call for renewing an expired tax credit for wind energy producers as well as measures to curb global warming emissions.
Shes going to talk about how [clean energy] remains a potential area of economic growth, and its increasingly one where we have global competition, Neera Tanden, the policy director of Clintons 2008 presidential campaign and head of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, told MSNBC.
The former top diplomat is unlikely, however, to touch the red-hot subject of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship Canadian tar sands crude oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. Clintons State Department oversaw part of the environmental review process, which is still in progress, though President Barack Obama will have the final word on whether it gets built. MSNBC noted that Clinton has largely dodged questions about the pipeline, saying any answers could interfere with the process.
Christie, by contrast, pounced on Keystone XL during a Wednesday policy speech in Mexico City. He said delays on the pipeline have had a chilling effect on economic growth and job creation. We are missing an enormous opportunity when we delay development of the Keystone XL Pipeline, he told a crowd at the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, a business advocacy group.
TransCanada Corp. (NYSE:TRP) first proposed the pipeline in 2008, during the Bush administration, but a final verdict seems unlikely to come before 2015. Obama postponed his decision on the pipeline until a legal dispute in the Nebraska Supreme Court is resolved, but the court isnt expected to issue a final ruling before the new year.
Christie asserted that, if built, the 1,179-mile conduit would drive down the price of oil and help consumers in all North American countries, although the pipelines impact on global oil markets is highly disputed.
He also called for an end to the four-decade-long ban on U.S. crude oil exports - - a policy shift that the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell PLC (NYSE:RDS.A), Ben van Beurden, called for earlier this week at a New York energy conference, the New York Times noted. Van Beurden said lifting the ban, which was meant to conserve domestic oil reserves after the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s, could make the global energy system much more stable.
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Hillary Clinton, Chris Christie Appeal To Energy Industry Constituents Ahead Of Potential 2016 Presidential Runs
By Hillary Rodham Clinton September 4 at 3:00 PM
Hillary Rodham Clinton was the 67th secretary of state.
When Americans look around the world today, we see one crisis after another. Russian aggression in Ukraine, extremism and chaos in Iraq and Syria, a deadly epidemic in West Africa, escalating territorial tensions in the East and South China seas, a global economy that still isnt producing enough growth or shared prosperity the liberal international order that the United States has worked for generations to build and defend seems to be under pressure from every quarter. Its no wonder so many Americans express uncertainty and even fear about our role and our future in the world.
In his new book, World Order, Henry Kissinger explains the historic scope of this challenge. His analysis, despite some differences over specific policies, largely fits with the broad strategy behind the Obama administrations effort over the past six years to build a global architecture of security and cooperation for the 21st century.
During the Cold War, Americas bipartisan commitment to protecting and expanding a community of nations devoted to freedom, market economies and cooperation eventually proved successful for us and the world. Kissingers summary of that vision sounds pertinent today: an inexorably expanding cooperative order of states observing common rules and norms, embracing liberal economic systems, forswearing territorial conquest, respecting national sovereignty, and adopting participatory and democratic systems of governance.
This system, advanced by U.S. military and diplomatic power and our alliances with like-minded nations, helped us defeat fascism and communism and brought enormous benefits to Americans and billions of others. Nonetheless, many people around the world today especially millions of young people dont know these success stories, so it becomes our responsibility to show as well as tell what American leadership looks like.
This is especially important at a time when many are wondering, as Kissinger puts it, Are we facing a period in which forces beyond the restraints of any order determine the future?
For me, this is a familiar question. When I walked into the State Department in January 2009, everyone knew that it was a time of dizzying changes, but no one could agree on what they all meant. Would the economic crisis bring new forms of cooperation or a return to protectionism and discord? Would new technologies do more to help citizens hold leaders accountable or to help dictators keep tabs on dissidents? Would rising powers such as China, India and Brazil become global problem-solvers or global spoilers? Would the emerging influence of non-state actors be defined more by the threats from terrorist networks and criminal cartels, or by the contributions of courageous NGOs? Would growing global interdependence bring a new sense of solidarity or new sources of strife?
President Obama explained the overarching challenge we faced in his Nobel lecture in December 2009. After World War II, he said, America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace. ... And yet, a decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats.
I was proud to help the president begin reimagining and reinforcing the global order to meet the demands of an increasingly interdependent age. In the presidents first term, we laid the foundation, from repaired alliances to updated international institutions to decisive action on challenges such as Irans nuclear program and the threat from Osama bin Laden.
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Hillary Clinton reviews Henry Kissingers World Order
Guns and Steel 061- Hillary Clinton and Firearms
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