The real call for the next Prez not at 3 a.m.

Instead, as Joseph Romm, author of the excellent book “The Hype About Hydrogen” (five-starred by me on Amazon) says, the next president will have a daily call for global warming action.

Romm says either Clinton or Obama would definitely be better than McCain at answering this call, but that we shouldn’t expect either one to be a miracle worker:

Before I look in depth at them, the first thing to make clear is that no president, not even a modern-day Lincoln or FDR, could possibly stop global warming even by their second term. The increase in concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is primarily what determines how much humans will increase the planet's temperature. To stop concentrations from rising further, the entire planet will have to reduce total annual emissions at least 60 percent or more from current levels, including carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. Absent a World War II-type mobilization, that kind of dramatic change in the planet's energy system will take a few decades.

Beyond a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade system (which in the Clinton and Obama platforms calls for deeper CO2 cuts than Schmuck Talk Express™ does), Romm says the next president has other global warming calls to make:

• Appoint judges who will uphold laws to reduce emissions against challenges from the big polluters.
• Appoint leaders and staff of key federal agencies who take climate change seriously and believe in the necessary solutions.
• Embrace an aggressive and broad-based technology deployment strategy to keep the cost of the cap-and-trade system as low as possible.
• Lead a change in utility regulations to encourage, rather than discourage, energy efficiency and clean energy.
• Offer strong public advocacy to reverse the years of muzzling and misinformation of the Bush administration.

Romm says both understand the need for major upgrades to the electric power grid, and changing how utilities do business.

And, despite pandering toward coal and ethanol interests, especially on Obama’s part, Romm says both candidates calls for lower-CO2 fuels will rule out serious increases in either ethanol or coal gasification.

As for either one being better than Mad Max McCain, Schmuck Talk has already said he would vote against clean energy tax credits already on the books.

And the need for more than the current do-nothingism? Huge:

That is why China is projected to be the top producer of both solar photovoltaic cells and wind turbines by 2010.

We’re getting our ass kicked on green energy, and there’s plenty of jobs out there if we want to stop getting our ass kicked.