Producer/Host: Meredith DeFrancesco
Today we take a look at the Obama administration’s proposed initiative to seriously address global climate change and create jobs. We speak with Maine environmental groups on their ideas of how this might be implemented.
And as the United States swears president Obama into office, we get an update on another potential electoral sea change in country with historic ties to the US : El Salvador. We will speak with an election observer of this Sunday’s past legislative elections.
First we look at the push for a national and state level shift towards a green economy. We start with an interview with Dylan Voorhees, the Clean Energy Director at the National Resources Council of Maine.
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1. As Preident Obama announces that green infrastructure and energy will be central to economic recovery and job creation in the US, Can you talk about the potential and necessity, from your perspective of a movement to create an economy based on taking on global climate change?
2. Can you talk about the current and potential movement in Maine- in terms of federal and state legislation, subsidies, research and development and citizen initiative. For a green economy. What is now being proposed, and what more needs to be done?
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Segment 2: Katie Kokkinos, with Environment Maine. That organization has just released a report called “Clean Energy, Bright Future – Rebuilding America through Green Infrastructure” She outlines what the report has recommended in terms of renewable energy, energy efficiency and transportation, and how hopeful they might be that the Obama administration’s initiative will reflect these.
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As the United States tries to turn from the policies of an entrenched right wing party, with the change of parties and presidents, this week El Salvador is also embroiled in historic elections as well. In March, the country will hold it’s presidential elections. Currently and consistently in the polls, FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes is ahead of the right wing ARENA party candidate, the party which has been in power since the brutal civil war, in which government and paramilitary forces murdered, tortured, massacred and disappeared 10s of 1000s of civilians.
This past Sunday, El Salvador engaged in country wide legislative elections, which brought forth 2 potential harbingers for the next elections. One was the switching of historically ARENA areas to FMLN supporting. But also the elections exposed wide spread voter fraud, specifically impacting traditionally left areas to reflect support for ARENA.
A number of election observers traveled from the US and other places for Sunday’s elections.
We speak by phone with Leigh Hardy, an US election observer from Cambridge Sister Cities, and Michelle Anderson, from US El Salvador Sister Cities, to give us an update from San Salvador.
Questions/Points:
-FMLN winning new areas
-election fraud
-Lorena Martinez from CRIPDES wins alternate Deputado seat
-March elections and election observation delegation
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* For more information on the upcoming March election observing delegation etc: www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org
* www.nrcm.org
* www.environmentmaine.org