The Political Climate: an ongoing commentary on the NH Primary and Climate Change

TPC noticed an interesting blog from a leader in South Carolina who looks at the climate issue from an emerging perspective.  Rusty Pritchard, one of the growing number of evengelicals concerned with climate change, is in SC with the “Redeem The Vote” Campaign.  He wrote the following:

“I spoke this morning at a press conference in South Carolina, on the front steps of the Statehouse, about the emerging voice for creation care among evangelicals. Here is a draft of those remarks:

I’m concerned that young people and people of faith get disconnected from the political process because they often fail to see their values reflected in that process. Younger evangelicals in particular are often frustrated with what they see as partisan bickering and deadlock, and they are equally frustrated with what the media portrays as a narrow evangelical political agenda. Evangelicals dislike being pigeonholed as single-issue voters in any political party’s back pocket. They would prefer that candidates reflect their values rather than the other way around.”

The State Newspaper also picked up on this story and wrote about how climate leaders and evangelicals are changing the discourse within the primary in a piece titled “Heaven and Earth (and politics).”

The story noticed that “young evangelicals across South Carolina are changing the way presidential candidates think about climate change and other issues.”

This is just one more example of the important role faith is playing in the climate movement.

January 11.  Wow.  This place looks like a summer camp shut down after the season ends.  Torn Tancredo yard signs lay in the gutter. ‘Stop Global Warming’ yard signs stuck in piles of dirty snow, leaning against the rain (and its thundering, now, in January, in New Hampshire).

Will Smith would be right at home -  they could have filmed I Am Legend in Portsmouth or Manchester now that everyone’s left town.

Where’s everybody?  Bill Richardson’s dropped out and back home in New Mexico.  McCain has a toehold in the Palmetto State.  Romney has pulled ads from the Sunshine State in order to do battle in the Wolverine State.

How’d we do here in NH?  Science gave us a tip of the beany.  Time said a clear position on climate change was one of the 8 keys to winning NH -  putting this one issue in the same league as an endorsement from the Union Leader ! Wowee!!.

The blogosphere is choc-a-bloc with news about McCain’s global warming rhetoric in the final stretch to the gold medal (Apologies, Mittens for the lame link to the Olympics).  Here here and here for example.  And we’re stirring up the pot … here’s a sample of the emails we’ve received:

“With so many left leaning groups like yours pontificating on the global warming hoax, utilizing scare tactics based on buy viagra online junk science, and essentially endorsing the redistribution of wealth, we will lose our way of life.”

“Global Warming is a religion and a HOAX.  Do your own research and stop taking away American freedom and advocating the redistrubution of wealth to fund your religion.”

“Do you have any proof of any of these things occurring?  Do you think that you are educating people, or scaring them into throwing their money away?”
“Where were the suv’s and power companies when the dinosaurs and mastadons died and the glaciers that covered much of our nation melted?  This great earth and universe will continue to renew itself whether people populate this earth or not - so take a deep breath and exhale your carbon dioxide for the trees and plants - they need it to survive…”

Sticks and stones — but what are we to make of the wild reaction to McCain’s position?  People are ripping into him like he’s taking something away.  Freedom, baby.  IT’S MY RIGHT DRIVE MY YUKON TO PICK UP A GALLON OF MILK DOWN AT THE 7-11.

Crazies out there.  Makes me want to fire up my two-stroke chain saw, take down some trees and build a fence …..

Before Christmas, LCV was complaining that the media elite were dissing climate change and presidential politics.  If Russert, Stephanopoulos, and Couric won’t listen to LCV, maybe they will follow in the footsteps of one of their peers: The New York Times.

The New York Times editorial board decided to take a look at the candidates’ climate change positions in yesterday’s editorial “The One Environmental Issue.”  The editorial found that in past years Democratic and Republican strategists believed that climate change was “too complicated and forbidding an issue to sell to ordinary voters” and therefore was not an issue in 2000 or 2004 elections, but now they say, “the times have certainly changed.”

Of the Democrats, the editorial now says:

“Still, the country is a long way from a comprehensive response equal to the challenge. That is what the Democratic candidates are proposing. Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards, Gov. Bill Richardson and Representative Dennis Kucinich have all offered aggressive plans that would go beyond the Senate bill and reduce emissions by 80 percent by midcentury (90 percent in Mr. Richardson’s case), much as called for in the United Nations reports.

Internationally, the Democrats say they would seek a new global accord on reducing emissions to replace and improve upon the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Winning agreement among more than 180 nations will be slow-going, so several candidates, including Mrs. Clinton, have suggested jump-starting the process by bringing together the big emitters like China very early in their administrations.”

Two months ago, The New York Times first highlighted “the GOP Divide” on climate change after Mike Huckabee joined John McCain as the only Republicans to endorse a cap on carbon emissions.

This Times editorial described McCain as “authentic pioneer” in the senate on climate change, and “The other leading Republican candidates — Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee — talk about energy issues almost exclusively in the context of freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil. All promote nuclear power, embrace energy efficiency and promise greener technologies. Only Mr. Huckabee has dared raise the idea of government regulation, embracing, at least theoretically, the idea of a mandatory cap on emissions. The rest prefer President Bush’s cost-free and demonstrably inadequate voluntary approach, which essentially asks industry to do what it can to reduce emissions.”

When so much of the campaign news is focused on anything but the actual issues, it is refreshing to finally see national coverage of the climate issue and the presidential campaign.