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

The big news coming out of the DNC meeting is receiving plenty of attention elsewhere, so we’ll just give you this bit of perspective from Dante Scala at St. Anselm, “My guess is it will be pretty much business as usual. No one comes up here to campaign here for the delegates. You come up here to win New Hampshire and get on the cover of Time magazine and the momentum that comes with that victory.” The Union Leader story is here and the NY Times is here.

Other campaign tidbits from the weekend: The Concord Monitor has this piece with NY Governor George Pataki branding Hillary Clinton a partisan naysayer. The Monitor does a good job putting this claim in the context of the partnerships she has created in Washington, complete with a quote from Lindsay Graham, R-S.C.

Last night in Portsmouth, Timberland and Clean Air-Cool Planet sponsored a free showing of An Inconvenient Truth at the Portsmouth Music Hall. The line for admission went around the block and there was not an empty seat to be had.  After the show, a panel featuring CA-CP partners spoke on individual and institutional solutions to climate change.

Were you at the showing last night, or have you seen it somewhere else? We are opening up the blog to your thoughts and comments about the movie and the panel. Ideas, impressions and reactions wanted!

Earlier this week we mentioned the Nashua Energy Festival in a longer post on individuals making a difference on climate change. New Hampshire Public Radio aired a story on the festival on Tuesday, a transcript and audio file of which are available here. This story features Angela Vincent, coordinator of Nashua’s Green Team and a member of the Carbon Coalition’s steering committee, and Cameron Wake, a University of New Hampshire climate researcher who has done a lot of work with Clean Air-Cool Planet.

The story mentions yet another example environment-friendly practices reaping economic benefits. The city of Nashua saved $42,000 dollars last year by using more efficient lightbulbs. The cost to taxpayers for this upgrade was a whopping…nothing, thanks to rebates provided by PSNH. Has your community changed its lightbulbs?

The Political Climate will be keeping an eye out for speeches, policy statement, op-eds, etc. by declared and undeclared candidates in the 2008 presidential race. Last week we had George Pataki. This week, we have a piece that John Kerry wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle.

He identifies three steps “imperative to addressing global warming”: 1.establish a mandatory program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions; 2. provide incentives to transition to a low-carbon economy; 3. realize the global nature of the problem.

He goes on to lay out his plan (much of it included in a bill that he is introducing) to, among other things, institute a cap-and-trade program beginning in 2010 that will bring carbon emissions down to 65% below 2000 rates by 2050.

Read the piece here.

By the way, he references An Inconvenient Truth, which will be at the Portsmouth Music Hall on Friday and Saturday. (No tickets left for Thursday.)