In a taped statement yesterday, President-elect Obama addressed an international meeting on climate change hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger in  and co-hosted by an all-star, bi-partisan group of governors active on global warming issues (see Canada's reaction here).  My colleague, Peter Miller, who was there said it was the first time he's seen a video taped statement receive a standing ovation. NRDC reacted quickly with our President, Frances Beinecke, lauding Obama's statement and commenting that addressing climate change through clean energy available now can help turn our country's faltering economy around.

After eight years of an Administration fighting the reality of global warming, it is indeed a huge moment to hear our President-elect talk about the high a priority it will be for his Administration. He laid out his plan to work with Congress to pass climage change legislation and to re-engage with the international community, much of which puts acting on global warming as central to renewed relations with the United States. My colleague, Jake Schmidt, talks about what this means for moving the international agenda post-2012 (building upon Kyoto).

But for those of us working on the darker edge of the energy debates, this statement comes as yet another commitment by President-elect Obama to move us away from the harmful fossil fuels that have not only made our country less efficient, and therefore less stable economically, but put life on our planet at serious risk.  We hope that investors, politicians, and those in the oil and coal industry that are weighing the future for "dirty fuels" will stop to listen to the new direction that our new President-elect plans to take the country.  

Unfortunately, a whole new synthetic, high carbon fuels industry is being put in place to recover oil from the most difficult places, literally cooking oil out of rocks and scraping it out of sand buried deep under carbon rich forest reserves.  Our analysis shows that the carbon emissions from developing dirty fuels could offset much of the gains we have made from improving our fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

Let's hope the trifecta of low oil prices, financial credit collapse and an incoming Administration tasked on moving the country to low carbon, not high carbon fuels, will give us the breathing room to shift gears and move our country away from these dirty fuels. Canada is the largest oil supplier to the U.S. and half of their oil exports already come from the high carbon, environmentally destructive tar sands. And the Bush Administration announced yesterday that they are proceeding with regulations to open 2 million acres of public land for oil shale development.

This is taking us backwards, not forwards, on energy policy and was part and parcel of what the voters rejected in the November 4th elections. We're going to put our bet on - and our advocacy behind - clean energy, energy efficiency and renewables such as wind, solar and next generation biofuels, rather than these dirty, high carbon fuels.  We know that change won't be easy - all the forces that have pushed a high carbon fuels agenda are still in play - Big Oil and Coal and all the election contributions to members of Congress.  But it will make a huge difference to have leadership and support right at the very top. Yesterday's welcome statement signals that we might be one step closer to rejecting these dirty fuels.