Obama the only winner when it comes to the environment

Convention dictates that before any US election, media outlets across the globe endorse one or other of the candidates.

Now if there is one thing BusinessGreen.com never wants to do it is stand in the way of convention, but as polling stations across the US start to unlock their doors it hardly seems worth the effort of pointing out which presidential candidate represents the best bet for green and cleantech businesses.

If the election proves to be as much of a one horse race as the environmental and energy policy debate between Obama and McCain over the past few months, then the young Senator from Illinois really is heading for a historic landslide.

There may be valid questions to be asked over the extent to which the media has fallen in love with the Obama campaign, but when it comes to energy and environmental issues it is hardly evidence of liberal bias to conclude that the Democrat has out performed his rival at almost every turn.

This fact was hammered home most effectively in the second live debate between the candidates, when Obama responded to a request to rank energy, healthcare and social security as priorities, by immediately selecting energy as his top priority.

In comments redolent of his entire campaign, McCain attempted to fudge this most complex and urgent of issues by claiming all three areas could be addressed at once. With the economy already on the slide such optimism looked staggeringly ill-founded.

In contrast, Obama's willingness to make energy and climate change two of the core issues of his candidacy has been backed up by solid, if occasionally unspectacular, policy commitments and plenty of that soaring rhetoric that has turned him into a global political superstar.

Whether it his plans for a cap-and-trade scheme governed by climate scientists' demands for an 80 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050 compared to McCain's proposals for a 60 per cent cut; his commitment to invest $150bn (£94bn) over 10 years in cleantech against McCain's pledge for just $2bn (£1.25bn) a year for clean coal; or his limited support for more offshore oil drilling contrasted with the Republicans' mantra of "drill, baby, drill", Obama has had the more sophisticated and effective policies for tackling the conjoined challenges of climate change and energy security.

In truth, all this is slightly unfair on McCain, for while a Republican victory would be a cataclysmic shock for the psephologists, it should not be a disaster for the green business movement.

His controversial vice presidential sidekick might not be entirely sold on the concept of manmade climate change, but McCain is a long-term supporter of measures to address the issue and while his poor performance in the polls might have forced his campaign to the right, his underlying environmental policy commitments are an order of magnitude more advanced than those of the Bush administration – although, short of promising to nuke the Brazilian rainforest, it is hard to imagine how they could have been worse.

It is just that Obama's environmental package promises so much more again. It has the potential to not only cement the US position as the dominant player in the global cleantech industry, but also provide the final building block in a worldwide carbon market and deliver the political leadership that turns a UN-backed deal on climate change from a possibility to a genuine likelihood.

It is little wonder that environmentalists and green businesses the world over will be crossing their fingers for an Obama White House tonight.