Green Obama’s official limo is a gas guzzler - Times Online

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to get a million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015. His own new presidential limousine will be far from green, however.

The Obamobile being prepared for the president-elect is said to be a monster gas-guzzler made by General Motors, the troubled car giant. It will look like a black Cadillac but is built like a tank. A spy photographer who tracks down future car models for magazines snatched pictures of the heavily disguised first-car-in-waiting when it was being road-tested last summer.

The armour-plated car, which has a raised roof, windows up to 5in thick, extra-strength tyres and a body made of steel, aluminium, titanium and ceramics, is thought to be based on a GMC 2500 truck that gets less than 10 miles to the gallon. Three cars are believed to be in production so that two can serve as decoys.

While security is paramount - the car is built to survive roadside bombs as well as gunfire - there are hybrid four-wheel drives on the market, such as Ford’s Mercury Mariner, which some critics believe could have been adapted for the president.

PIELKE and GREEN: The cure for carbon : Speakout : The Rocky Mountain News

With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, debates over climate policy are going to get a much needed boost. The Obama plan for climate policy includes one very good idea - investment in new technologies and infrastructure - and one very bad one: cap-and-trade.

To understand why cap-and-trade is such a bad idea, we need only look to lessons from Europe's experiences.