New U.S. Fuel Efficiency Standards
Plus 30 Other Obama Accomplishments
This week America’s attention was squarely placed on the Democratic National Convention. Talking heads debated over President Obama’s economic stance and dissected his words on the war. Some have even taken the POTUS to task over the energy policies he grazed over during last night’s speech.
But from where we’re standing, the Commander-in-Chief is on the right track with the impressive new fuel efficiency standards recently finalized by his Administration. In his rousing speech on Wednesday night, former President Bill Clinton touted the agreement Obama made with management, labor and environmental groups to double average U.S. car mileage to 54.5 MPG by 2025:
“It will cut your gas bill in half, no matter what the price is… It will make us more energy independent. It will cut greenhouse gas emissions. And, according to several analyses, over the next 20 years it will bring us another half a million good, new jobs into the American economy.”
“We’re offering a better path,” President Obama said in his speech on Thursday, “a future where we keep investing in wind and solar and clean coal, where farmers and scientists harvest new biofuels to power our cars and trucks… If you choose this path, we can cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone.”
But this effort to help the U.S. lighten its environmental footprint is hardly the first big move made during Obama’s time in the White House. Here, we highlight 30 Obama accomplishments that align with the ideals upon which Green Global Travel was founded:
- Increased funding for national parks and forests by 10%.
- Signed Executive Order re: Stewardship of the Ocean (established National Ocean Council ), our Coasts and the Great Lakes
- Established an Energy Partnership for the Americas.
- Became the first president to endorse same-sex marriage equality.
- Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, restoring basic protections against pay discrimination for women and other workers.
- Established the Biofuels Working Group to develop a comprehensive approach to alternative fuels.
- Provided $12.2 Billion in new funding for Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
- Lifted restrictions, granting Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.
- Implemented renewable fuels mandate of 36 billion gallons by 2022.
- Extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
- Purchased more fuel efficient, American-made fleet for the federal government.
- Named the first Latina to the US Supreme Court.
- Increased funding for the Environmental Protection Agency.
- Promoted social responsibility through creation of serve.gov, a national database of volunteer opportunities.
- Signed New START Treaty, a nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia.
- Signed bill to protect millions of acres of Federal land as wilderness, protect more than 1,000 miles of rivers through the National Wild and Scenic River System, and designate thousands of miles of trails for the National Trails System.
- Launched recovery.gov to track spending from the Recovery Act, providing transparency and allowing the public to report fraud, waste or abuse.
- Significantly increased funding for the Violence Against Women Act.
- Increased funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
- Expanded Pell grants, which help low-income students pay for college.
- Incentivized farmers to use more renewable energy and be more energy efficient.
- Signed the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act, which provides health care to 11 million kids–4 million of whom were previously uninsured.
- Led international efforts to phase out whaling.
- Issued executive order to repeal Bush-era restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
- Invested $2 billion in solar power, creating new jobs.
- Signed the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, the first piece of comprehensive legislation aimed at improving the lives of Americans living with paralysis.
- Expanded hate crime law in the US to include sexual orientation through the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
- Established partnerships to share environmental technology with other countries.
- Worked toward deploying a global climate change research and monitoring system.
- Developed the stimulus package, which includes approx. $18 billion for non-defense scientific research and development.
- Gave executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. –DeMarco Williams
