I’ve been so busy with work and extracurricular activities (Korean class, orchestra) that I haven’t been able to keep up my schedule. It’s remarkable how much time it takes to research. No wonder we have journalists!

As I’m running out of time, I’ll just summarize what I have found are the differences between Clinton and Obama on a variety of topics. It’s interesting that for the most part, their strategies and goals for things like energy/environment, healthcare, job creation,  etc. are very close with just a few differences.

LABOR
Both support strengthening workers’ rights to organize and bargain and both want to raise minimum wage. Obama makes an extra call to index minimum wage to inflation so that it retains its value vs. inflation.

ENERGY
Both propose similar targets, such as investing $150B over 10 years in clean technologies,  reducing carbon emissions 80% by 2050, require that 25% of energy generated in the US is from renewable resources by 2025, 100% auctioning of cap-and-trade system pollution credits to fund energy initiatives, and rewarding farmers for planting forests and other measures to capture carbon dioxide, and promoting fuel economy standards.

They both also promote training workers to work for “green technology” industries. Clinton estimates 5M jobs over 10 years created from promotion of clean energy, and promote a forum of G8, high-carbon emitters while also working within the UN framework for climate change.

Obama goes a bit further with goals also aiming to reduce US oil consumption by 35% by 2030, and offering incentives to “early adopters” among power companies to decouple increased energy use with higher profits.

Hillary has a slightly more prominent focus on energy efficiency — whereas Obama seems much more focused on developing alternative or low-carbon fuels (not that Hillary isn’t).
- Hillary and Barack propose rewarding states that promote land use policies to prevent sprawl and encourage public transit)
- increase federal funding for public transit, including  investing $1B in intercity passenger rail systems. (Obama proposes increasing the the benefit employers can give for transit from $105 per employee/month to equal that of the parking benefit of $205 per month)
- create a “Connie Mae” to provide low cost home improvement loans for energy efficiency
- reduce electricity consumption by 20% from projected 2020 levels.

Sources:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/files/pdf/poweringamericasfuture.pdf (14pp, excellent)
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/EnergyFactSheet.pdf (11pp)