Send a message to President-elect Obama
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008Next week I go to Washington DC in my role as the Board Chair for the national Clean Water Network to meet with President-elect Obama’s transition team.
We have a lot to ask our new president - basically to roll back every executive order signed by Bush in the last eight years and to increase protection for water resources in the coming four, hopefully eight years.
A word of caution, though. Everyone has really high, very high, excruciatingly high expectations of this president and for good reason. The stature of the United States has declined precipitously in the past eight years. We are not the power we think we are. We may flex muscles abroad, but we are weak here at home. Getting our drinking and waste water infrastructure up to par would require something like $400M/year for the next ten years. We must find a more sustainable way to live so that we don’t put ourselves in a position for corporatization of water resources. Or worse, run out of fresh water.
President-elect Obama cannot do everything we want. He will not be able to give us everything we ask. He will fail at some level and that’s not a fault but an inevitability. TCWN will continue to criticize bad decisions whether they are from this president or the next. We will not change our position because we perceive this administration to be friendly. In fact, we plan to make more demands. President-elect Obama thinks preserving a healthy environment is important. We intend to make him live up to that idea.
If you’ve got something you’d like me to pass on to the transition team, post it on this blog. I’ll make sure they get addressed.
RvH