Obama, Once a Coal-Industry Backer, Shifts Stance

This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planets began to heal.
Barack Obama - Democratic Nomination Victory Speech

Excerpted from AZ Central:

In May 1998, at the urging of the state's coal industry, the Illinois Legislature passed a bill condemning the Kyoto global warming treaty and forbidding state efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.

Barack Obama voted "aye."

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee now calls climate change "one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation," and proposes cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. But as a state senator, from 1997 to 2004, he usually supported bills sought by coal interests, according to legislative records and interviews....

Obama, who touts his independence from special interests, made a point of embracing the coal industry as part of his quest for statewide office. When he ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was flanked by mine workers to proclaim that "there's always going to be a role for coal" in Illinois....

Employees of coal companies and electric utilities have contributed $539,597 to Obama's U.S. Senate and presidential campaign, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics...

"He's definitely trying to straddle two politically irreconcilable objectives: Taking decisive action against global warming while keeping a healthy coal industry," said Frank O'Donnell, president of the non-partisan Clean Air Watch. "...

Obama's other votes on coal in the state Senate included:

In 1997, he voted to divert sales taxes to a fund for grants to help reopening closed coal mines and "incentives to attract new businesses that use coal."

In 2001, he voted for legislation that offered of $3.5 billion in loan guarantees to build coal-fired power plants with no ability to control carbon emissions....

In 2003, he voted to allow $300 million in taxpayer-backed bonds to build or expand coal-fired power plants.

Obama also drew criticism for sponsoring a bill in January 2007 to devote $8 billion in subsidies to a technology to convert coal to liquid fuel. The Sierra Club says liquid coal "releases almost double the global warming emissions per gallon as regular gasoline."

As the presidential campaign was well under way in June 2007, the Obama campaign issued a clarification: He would not support liquid coal processes unless they emit a fifth less carbon than conventional fuels.

"When you're running for president and you've got environmentalists biting your head off every day, that's to be expected," said Phil Gonet, head of the Illinois Coal Association. "We're still optimistic that he may be helpful at some point in the future."