Hillary has come out with an energy and climate plan every bit as good as Obama’s plan (and indeed quite similar to it). The detailed 16-page plan is titled, “Powering America’s Future: Hillary Clinton’s Plan to Address the Energy and Climate Crisis.”

Centered on a cap and trade system for carbon emissions, stronger energy and auto efficiency standards and a significant increase in green research funding…. the plan would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of global warming, and cut foreign oil imports by two-thirds from 2030 projected levels, more than 10 million barrels per day….

Hillary would increase fuel efficiency standards to 55 miles per gallon by 2030, but would help automakers retool their production facilities through $20 billion in “Green Vehicle Bonds.”

Here are some of the key details:

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John Podesta and Peter Ogden of the Center for American Progress have written a chapter “Global Warning: The Security Challenges of Climate Change” for a report “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change.” They describe their work as follows:

During the course of the past year, a high-level working group of foreign policy experts, climate scientists, historians, and other specialists has met regularly to investigate the national security and foreign policy implications of climate change. Many of the key findings of this task force, which was directed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security, are presented in a new report entitled “The Age of Consequences.”

“The Age of Consequences” is organized around three possible climate change scenarios that were developed by Pew Center Senior Climate Scientist Dr. Jay Gulledge in consultation with other leading experts in the field. Our chapter, presented here in its complete, unabridged form, analyzes the foreign policy and national security implications of the most moderate of these scenarios over a 30-year timeframe. We identify the critical challenges created or exacerbated by climate change that the United States and the international community will confront, including:

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For those interested in the agricultural side of energy and sustainability, I have been excerpting updates from the Center for American Progress’s Jake Caldwell. He has a new post: “Growing Together: The New Farm Bill Must Represent all Americans.” Here are some excerpts:

The current bill provides a significant boost in our efforts to prepare for the next generation of cellulosic biofuels–liquid fuels sustainably produced from energy crops such as switchgrass and agricultural wastes such as corn stalks and rice hulls. Importantly, the bill also provides for the use of transparent certification and labeling criteria to encourage sustainable production of biofuels through the innovative “Voluntary Renewable Biomass Certification Program.”

An investment in advanced biofuels, however, must be accompanied by enhanced environmental safeguards and incentives for biofuel producers to conserve land and water resources, maximize lifecycle greenhouse gas emission reductions, and grow energy crops in a sustainable manner. At the same time, any attempt to introduce a Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates a portion of our nation’s fuel supply consist of renewable fuels, in the Farm Bill at the eleventh hour is counterproductive to our nation’s overall energy policy and must be rejected. A Renewable Fuel Standard with meaningful environmental safeguards belongs in the Energy Bill–not in the Farm Bill.

In contrast, the so-called Voluntary Fuels Certification Program is a key component of the 2007 Farm Bill. The certification program is a voluntary, market-based mechanism that can be implemented in a short time frame (see chart, below). The inclusion of the low-cost certification program in the 2007 Farm Bill will expand and improve our nation’s farm and energy policy and it deserves our support.

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Okay, yes, I know — peacock’s are already pretty darn green.

I meant the Peacock network, who will be greening their operations — and broadcasting green-themed shows this week:

NBC Universal is launching more than 150 hours of environmentally themed content encompassing all of their programming divisions across multiple platforms for the week of Nov. 4 – 10. The big media company is taking it a step further and greening its own operations worldwide.

While I know that readers of Climate Progress are far too erudite to admit that you watch network television, I am giving you a pass this week to visit part of the vast wasteland and report on what green things you see. Plus you’ll need something to watch in place of The Daily Show.

I do watch some NBC shows, as I have blogged, and will DVR them when I’m in Chicago so I can report on them at week’s end.

I am one of the “Master Speakers” at GreenBuild, the annual conference of the US Green Building Council, this week in Chicago. USGBC is the rapidly growing nonprofit responsible for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System„¢.

I will be speaking Thursday at 10 am CST. Between the blog and my 9-month-old daughter, I don’t do as much public speaking as I used to. This will also be one of my longest talks in a while, so I plan to cover a lot of ground. I will be ending with a discussion of how designers need to incorporate likely global warming impacts into their buildings.

I think/hope you will be able to see a video of my talk here. And if you are coming to Greenbuild, stop by and say hello.

In my second of three blogs (Part I here) in response to the Businessweek article about Aspen Skiing Company’s work (“Little Green Lies“) I’ll expand on the article’s discussion of renewable energy certificates (RECs).

While the article justifiably criticized many RECs, it failed to make the point that there are good and bad RECs. (A REC represents the environmental attributes of one megawatt-hour of renewable energy.) The contrast between the two is stark. Bad RECs don’t do anything to drive new renewable energy development. A bad REC costs about $2 (though the price has gone up) and comes from, say, a wind farm that has been already developed. Your purchase may be a nice bonus for the wind farm developer (and for the REC broker you bought it from) but it didn’t do anything to change carbon dioxide emissions in the world.

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