Reduce mercury and lead to protect community health
Build Healthy Communities:
Obama has been a leader in eliminating lead poisoning from our communities.
He has introduced multiple pieces of legislation to reduce mercury and lead poisoning and is committed to identifying and addressing environmental health problems that affect too many of our communities.
Source: Campaign website, BarackObama.com, "Resource Flyers"
Aug 26, 2007
Protect the Great Lakes & our National Parks and Forests
Preserve the Great Lakes:
Obama has been a strong supporter of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration and co-sponsored the Great Lakes Environmental Restoration Act.
Protect National Parks and Forests:
Obama supports a true preservation policy for our nation's parks and forests. Obama fought efforts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and voted to prohibit the use of funds to construct new roads in Alaska's Tongass National Forest.
Source: Campaign website, BarackObama.com, "Resource Flyers"
Aug 26, 2007
Give Katrina contracts to locals, not to Halliburton
Q: Would you support a federal law guaranteeing the right to return to New Orleans and other Gulf regions devastated by Hurricane Katrina?
KUCINICH: Absolutely. The aftermath underscores everything that's wrong in this country about race.
GRAVEL:
Yes.
DODD: I would as well. New Orleans and Katrina have become a symbol of everything that went wrong with this administration's failure to respond to a people in need.
CLINTON: I have proposed a 10-point Gulf Coast Recovery Agenda, because even
if we were to give people a right, there is nothing to return to.
BIDEN: It's an American problem. We should guarantee the reconstruction.
RICHARDSON: Yes, I would support that. I would also support the Katrina Recovery Act.
EDWARDS: This
is an issue I care about personally and deeply.
OBAMA: Halliburton or Bechtel getting the contracts to rebuild instead of giving the people in New Orleans the opportunity to rebuild and get jobs and training is a further compounding of the outrage.
Source: 2007 Democratic Primary Debate at Howard University
Jun 28, 2007
Three months working on minority students recycling
I spent three months working for a Ralph Nader offshoot up in Harlem, trying to convince the minority students at City College about the importance of recycling.
Then a week passing out flyers for an assemblyman's race in Brooklyn - the candidate lost and I never did get paid.
Source: Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, p.129
Aug 1, 1996
Voted YES on including oil & gas smokestacks in mercury regulations.
A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on March 15, 2005, relating to the removal of coal- and oil-fired electric generating units from the list of major sources of hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The EPA's Clean Air Mercury Rule:
Limits smokestack emissions in a two-phase program founded on a market based capping system
Calls for the first cap to limit mercury emissions to 38 tons in 2010
Requires the second and final cap to begin in 2018 and stay fix at 15 tons
Reference: EPA's Clean Air Mercury Rule;
Bill S J Res 20
; vote number 2005-225
on Sep 13, 2005
