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

As we noted yesterday, Governor Lynch has announced the goal of producing 25% of energy consumed in NH from clean, renewable sources by 2025. Foster’s Daily Democrat applauded yesterday’s announcement in this editorial. They make a couple of good points, asserting that energy policy is not, and should not become, a partisan issue (TPC could not agree more) and pointing out that renewable energy is an economic, environmental, and national security issue. We would add that it is a moral issue as well.

Last week The Political Climate commented on an op-ed by Cass Sunstein about the mild consequences of global warming to the U.S. and China when compared to the consequences to much of the rest of the world. This article from the New York Times supports Sunstein’s assessment of the degree to which climate change poses a threat to developing nations, both through climate-caused disasters such as rising sea levels and drought, and through diminishing aid dollars as they are siphoned off to combat the donor countries’ own climate-caused problems.

Julie Eilperin at the Washington Post has been doing great work covering climate change and energy issues and had this article over the weekend on differing views of the effect of man-caused global warming and the recent intensity of hurricanes. Of course, there is not much dispute over the actual data, so the debate centers on what data you look at and how it is interpreted.

Eilperin unfortunately chooses to illustrate the political nature of this debate through a fairly extreme comment from Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute and a rebuttal from a Competitive Enterprise Institute policy type. She does, however,  note that CEI receives funding from the oil companies.

Worth the read.

The past 24 hours have seen two press releases showing NH’s commitment to climate policy in very different lights. The first is a report card issuing grades to NE states based on their climate change efforts. The second announces Governor Lynch’s commitment to the national 25 X ‘25 effort to ensure that 25% of energy in the state comes from clean, renewable sources by 2025.  

First, the report card. New Hampshire earned a D+ in its efforts to meet agreed-upon goals under the Climate Change Action Plan, according to the 2006 “Climate Change Report Card” released by Clean Water Action in NH. What exactly does this mean? Assigning grades (or number ratings) for issues as complex as climate change is reasonably used as a spur to engagement rather than a comprehensive assessment of the issue. With that in mind, this grade affords an opportunity to look at what the state has (or has not) accomplished on the climate change front.

You can read the entire report, which includes the NE states and Eastern Canadian provinces, here. It is well worth reading and should provoke questions and conversation. The Political Climate has some questions about the report card that we welcome your response to: 1.) Who, exactly, is being rated here - the governor, the legislature, state utilities, citizens, all of the above (and who are we supposed to hold accountable)? 2.) NH is a RGGI signatory. Why are Massachusetts and Rhode Island, non-signatories, given higher grades than NH despite this lack of commitment? 3.) With the governor’s advocacy, progress has been made toward passing Renewable Portfolio Standards in the next legislative session, yet this is mentioned as an area for improvement. Is this an all-or-nothing criteria? 

For some perspective from the report card itself, NH is among the lowest emitters per capita of greenhouse gasses (in 2000).

The second press release details the governor’s commitment to the 25 X ‘25 campaign. This national campaign seeks to realize a goal of producing 25% of energy consumed in the US from clean, renewable power by 2025. The press release is here. The 25 X ‘25 Initiative has garnered support nationally and been endorsed by 14 governors, with Gov. Lynch the 15th. Learn more here.

The state - in all its sectors - has a part to play in climate policy and should be held accountable for its successes and failures in meeting its responsibilities, but the scale at which this problem must be addressed is national and, inevitably, international. That is why the Carbon Coalition is investing its efforts in empowering NH voters to engage presidential candidates on climate change during the primary season.