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The Presidential Candidate With a Plan to Run the US on 100% Clean Energy

Meet the only presidential candidate with a viable plan to stabilize the planet's climate.
Image: O'Malley

Right now, there's only one presidential candidate in either of the two major parties who's placed climate change front and center of his fledgling campaign. And no, it isn't this guy.

The single issue that most threatens to throw the globe into turmoil has barely been discussed at all by the men and women currently competing to run the most powerful nation on earth, which is pretty par for the course. Something like half of the country's registered Republicans are currently vying for their party's nomination, and most of them would rather give Hillary Clinton a foot massage than mention climate change in public. Some deny it's happening altogether, and others dance around the issue as if it were a flaming maypole.

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As for the Democrats, Clinton has made an encouraging statement or two regarding the issue, but it's hardly her focal point. She's made vague allusions to adopting an "aggressive" program, and has said in the past she's "inclined" to approve the carbon-loaded Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Bernie Sanders, who's currently enjoying a grassroots surge, has been a vocal proponent of strong action to curb climate change. But he's clearly positioned tackling income inequality and getting money out of politics as his top priorities. Former Virginia senator Jim Webb, who's also expected to run, is a disaster on climate policy.

"Protecting our country from climate change is at the center of my campaign. As President, on day one, I would use my executive power to declare the transition to a clean energy future the number one priority of our Federal Government."

That leaves Martin O'Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore and two-term governor of Maryland, who's trailing all of the above in the polls. In the wake of the pope's headline-grabbing encyclical on the environment, which champions the moral need to fight global warming and calls for a swift transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, the presidential contender published an op-ed in USA Today outlining an extremely ambitious plan to do precisely that.

"I believe, within 35 years, our country can, and should, be 100% powered by clean energy, supported by millions of new jobs," O'Malley writes. "To reach this goal we must accelerate that transition starting now."

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"As president, on day one, I would use my executive power to declare the transition to a clean energy future the number one priority of our Federal Government."

And that's the crux of it—thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority. O'Malley has not only done that, but he has outlined a plan that would enact emissions reductions in line with what scientists say is necessary to slow global climate change—worldwide emissions reductions of 40-70 percent by 2050—and he's the only candidate to do that, too. His plan would phase out fossil-fueled power plants altogether, by midcentury. Along with the USA Today op-ed, he released a white paper further outlining his scheme, which includes the following:

-Create a national Renewable Energy Standard that would mandate 100 percent clean energy by 2050
-Launch a seemingly New Deal-styled Clean Energy Job Corps that would retrofit buildings for efficiency and build green spaces
-Have the EPA enforce a "zero tolerance" methane leak policy (currently, natural gas production releases a staggering amount of the super-greenhouse gas into the atmosphere)
-Call on Congress to enact a carbon cap that would charge companies for their carbon pollution, and return the revenue to lower and middle class families
-Deny the Keystone XL and halt offshore oil drilling in Alaska

And so on. (See below to scan the entire plan.) It's ambitious stuff, though technically entirely achievable. Of course, any measure that couldn't be carried out with an executive order is currently untenable in our gridlocked political climate. This is a Congress where climate change-denying Jim "Snowball" Inhofe is the head of the Senate Environment Committee, recall. It's probably also the most anti-science Congress in recent history.

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O'Malley does have a political impetus to stake his claim on climate policy—it's one thing that will distinguish him from his peers. Hillary Clinton is currently, by an absurd margin, the frontrunner for the party's nomination, and Bernie Sanders' bump is powered by his populist economics. O'Malley, whom The Atlantic profiled as "The Long Shot"—and called "the most ignored candidate of 2016"—is currently polling at 2 percent; far behind Sanders, a light year behind Clinton, and behind even Webb, who hasn't entered the ring yet, according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. O'Malley needs his own trademark issue, like, yesterday. And given that last year was the hottest ever recorded, the drought in California, and the rising sea levels everywhere, climate change could use the spotlight.

"Given the grave threat that climate change poses to human life on our planet, we have not only a business imperative but a moral obligation to future generations to act immediately and aggressively," O'Malley wrote me in an email. "I learned in Maryland that these two goals are indivisible. As Governor—driven by ambitious targets—we created thousands of new jobs while deploying clean energy technology and reducing greenhouse gas pollution by nearly 10% over just seven years."

He isn't exaggerating. As governor, he would attend quarterly ClimateStat meetings and wonk out on the latest science. Mother Jones calls him a "real climate hawk." A spokesperson calls his approach in Maryland "a progressive data-driven climate agenda," and his record bears that out. While some of the reduction in greenhouse gases over that period can be attributed to the recession and federal auto emission mandates, much of the rest is the result of clean energy and efficiency initiatives spearheaded by O'Malley's administration. He also started the state's Climate Change Commission to adapt to and study sea level rise, which threatens Maryland's coast, and is fond, as most modern green-leaning pols are, of touting the job creation that comes with boosting the clean energy economy.

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"That's why protecting our country from climate change is at the center of my campaign," O'Malley said. "As President, on day one, I would use my executive power to declare the transition to a clean energy future the number one priority of our Federal Government. As the nation, we can do far more—with a bold vision for America's clean energy future and the strong leadership needed to get it done."

Granted, climate change has never ranked at the top of American voters' concerns. But there are signs that the majority of voters are increasingly uncomfortable with the hardline denial and ignorance that marks the stock GOP position, and O'Malley, like Obama, has increasingly shown a willingness to come out swinging against them. (Sample fighting words, from a speech last year: "To those who say climate change is not caused by human activity or that addressing it will harm the economy, let's encourage them to go to college, too, and to study physics and to study economics, but for the rest of us, let's get to work.") Comments like that, along with strong pledges to aid, say, drought-stricken California, hurricane-hit New York, or sea level rise-vulnerable Maryland, may win O'Malley a news cycle or two and resonate with an increasingly climate-conscious public.

And the environmental movement may not be the largest faction within the Democratic party, but it has proven a fervent and passionate force for campaigning; if O'Malley wins them over, it will be a headache for Clinton.

The governor's stance has already drawn the audience of at least one powerful Democratic voter—the party's biggest donor, Tom Steyer, whose vast fortune stands at the disposal of pro-green candidates. O'Malley may be the longest of the long shots now—but if he can win enough attention on the climate issue, it will at least force Clinton to clarify and strengthen her climate promises, if she hopes to win some Steyer-bucks and environmentalist support of her own.

The simple fact that there is a mainstream Democratic candidate seeking to stake his campaign on a vision of putting the nation on a path to 100 percent clean energy is another kind of indicator: It means the notion of a transition away from fossil fuels is gaining traction. It's not a utopian pipe dream, it's a former US governor's blueprint—long shot though it may be.

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