Iowa Public Television

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  Program: Iowa Press #3510
  Broadcast Date: Nov. 9, 2007
  

• Collection: Iowa Press: The Presidential Candidates

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Sen. Barack Obama gives examples of changes he'd like to make.

This interview took place on November 9, 2007, at Iowa Public Television.

www.iptv.org/campaign08/

Yepsen: Following on Mike's question. You've earned the reputation in the campaign for sometimes saying things that people don't want to hear. I remember you calling teachers, saying merit pay might need to be on the table in America. You told peace activists that, no, we may in fact have to spend more to rebuild the military that's been wrecked in Iraq. You just mentioned going to Detroit and telling -- give me some examples of what you will tell Americans that we don't necessarily want to hear.

Obama: Well, number one, we're going to have to start doing a better job of conserving on energy. Americans like to drive their big SUVs. They like to leave all the lights on in their house. We're going to have to change our habits.

If we want to deal with the climate change, which I think we have to deal with -- we're seeing already down in the Southeast, they're seeing drought that they haven't seen in a very long time. Western states, same problem.

It is indisputable that the climate is getting warmer. That's going to affect farmers. It's going to affect ordinary folks. If we want to do something serious about that, it's not going to be painless.

We're going to have to cap the emission of greenhouse gasses. That means that power plants are going to have to adjust how they generate power. They will pass on those costs to consumers. We will have to guard against lower income and fixed income individuals having to pay more for electricity, but a lot of us who can afford it are going to have to pay more per unit of electricity, and that means we're going to have to change our light bulbs, we're going to have to shut the lights off in our houses.

And those are adjustments that won't over the long term affect our standard of the living, but it does mean that we've got to show some responsibility to the next generation, something we haven't been doing.

• Barack Obama
• campaign 2008
• climate change
• Democrats
• electricity
• Energy/Environment
• HEAT
• Iowa
• politics

Post Date: June 4, 2008