Joe Biden Photo by Michael Millholin
Question: You've said that your first priority is "energy security." Can you clarify what this goal means and how you'd achieve it?
Answer: If the predictions of the scientists are correct, you could see ocean levels rise three feet. If that occurs, you're going to displace over 35 million people just in South Asia, and they're going to physically be looking for a new place to land. Just that, all by itself, is going to initiate major new conflicts relating to war. You're going to have nations fighting over arable land, more border disputes, and, as a consequence, a great deal of instability.
Question: How would you achieve energy security? What specifically do we need to do to get there?
Answer: To deal with global warming, you have to change the attitude of the world, particularly China and India, the two largest developing nations. But in order to do that, to have any credibility, you have to begin here in the United States by capping emissions, increasing renewable fuels, establishing a national renewable portfolio standard, requiring better fuel economy for automobiles. I would cap emissions at 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and set a national RPS of 20 percent. I would announce an executive order that the federal government would not purchase one single automobile for its fleet that gets less than 40 miles to the gallon. And I would not build a single solitary federal project without it being a green project. That would have the effect of getting states to do the same thing, and that would create a pot of somewhere between a third and a half a trillion dollars that would be a lure to every major business in America to go green.
These measures would put us in a position to be able to actually attempt to lead the world. But we have no credibility right now.
Question: Where does ethanol fit into your plan?
Answer: Ethanol is a good start. Because of the amount of [resources] that go into producing corn-based ethanol, it has only marginally less impact on the consumption of fossil fuels. But it has two real advantages: it begins to give us the margin of flexibility we need to deal with being held hostage to any one of the seven unstable countries that supply 35 percent of our oil -- Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, etc. No. 2, it's a transitional means by which you're going to be pouring billions of dollars into the fields of the Midwest, rather than the sands of Saudi Arabia or the pockets of Chavez.
Full text at www.Grist.org: Interview with VP candidate Joe Biden on Grist.org
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