Al Gore has a competitor for title of America's climate crusader. His name is Barack Obama, and of all his immediate foreign policy changes none will mark as big a shift from the Bush administration as his approach to cutting carbon emissions, the leading cause of global warming.

"President Obama will be like night and day compared to President Bush," Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told reporters this week at U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Poznan, Poland.

Obama's administration will mark a new era in U.S. climate policy, one eagerly awaited by countries and environmental groups that believe global warming is the most urgent problem facing the world today.
The Bush administration has steadfastly refused to sign on to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires the 37 industrial nations that have agreed to the pact to reduce emissions to just below 1990 levels by 2012.

Obama wants to cut U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels by 2020. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol. U.S. emissions now run 17 percent above 1990 levels, and his policies would allow them to keep rising until 2025.

Obama's approach would set a cap on emissions but also allow companies to share emission allowances if one company runs over its limit and another is below its ceiling. Bush opposed such mandates and instead promoted finding technological solutions.

Obama also is betting that pumping public money into "green jobs" tied to climate and energy policies can help pull the country out of recession.

The Senate and House are controlled by Democrats, so a green stimulus and a cap-and-trade program are on a fast track.

Obama has nominated an alternative fuels guru, Nobel-award winning physicist Steven Chu, to be the nation's energy secretary, and is creating a White House office on energy and environment to be run by Clinton-era EPA chief Carol Browner.

Buzz in the air
Abroad, Obama will have plenty of support for his dramatic departure from Bush's policies.

"As I walk around the hallways, I hear lots of different dialects and languages — and then 'Obama, Obama, Obama,'" Gustavo Silva-Chavez, a climate analyst with Environmental Defense, said during the Poznan talks. "So definitely a lot of the negotiators here understand that it's the end of the Bush era and the beginning of the Obama era, and they're very excited about that."

Brice Lalonde, the chief French delegate to the talks, said Europe was "thrilled" with Obama's promises to pursue renewable energies. If the U.S. commits itself to ambitious environmental goals, other countries will be forced to take bold steps themselves, he said.

Obama has promised to invest $15 billion each year to support private-sector efforts toward clean energy, arguing that tackling climate change can create millions of new jobs as the U.S. invests in technologies to promote solar and wind power, biofuels and cleaner coal-fired plants.