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

After Sen. Barack Obama took NH by storm last weekend, fellow presidential wannabes make their way into the state.  Gov. Bill Richardson is expected to make 14 stops here in the next two days.  Sen. Joe Biden who will speak at the New Hampshire Young Democrats Holiday Party tomorrow night in Manchester might bump into former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who will also be in Manchester at a holiday party tomorrow.  For more information on these events and to track other candidates who plan to visit the state, check out the Carbon Coalition’s Presidential Candidate Calendar.

Yesterday the Union Leader’s “Granite Status” reported that Sen. John McCain sent out a “Be There From the Beginning” email to many Granite Staters earlier this week.  Rumors that Sen. Hillary Clinton considering a visit to NH after the new year have been confirmed.  This article in the Union Leader reports that the State Democratic Party officials have invited Clinton to speak at a ”100 Club” dinner sometime between January and March.

If you’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth, but want more information about the local impacts of global warming you are now in luck.  Thanks to YouTube you can watch Ken Coburn, a member of the Carbon Coalition’s speaker’s bureau, give a half hour presentation on the effects of climate change in New Hampshire.  Go here to watch the video.

Global warming was a popular topic in today’s headlines.  This article in the New York Times reports data released by the British Meteorological Office and the University of East Anglia, determining that 2006 is the 6th hottest year every recorded.  This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise considering the World Meteorological Organization  (WMO) said the top 10 warmest years have all occurred in the last 12 years.  The article says these results are likely “stoked by global warming linked to human activities.”

But this article from ABC News says it’s not all anthropogenic–you can also blame “cows and pigs.  Yes, cows and pigs.”  A recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations says “the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems…land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.”  Cows give off methane in their digestive process and methane is known to be 23 times more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  Fortunately we don’t all need to run out and replace our filets with tofu, the FAO says “major reductions in impact could be achieved at reasonable cost.”

This article from the Washington Post covers a climate change conference held for top Wall Street investors, insurance executives, state treasurers and pension fund managers.  Michael Moran, VP of global investment research at Goldman, Sachs & Co., explained that for Wall Street this is the first step: “The first step to recovery is acknowledging you have a problem.” 

Tackling such issues, The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, which was released on October 30th, is now being critiqued by two well-known economists.  William Nordhaus of Yale University and Sir Partha Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge are concerned that the “social rate of time discount” (whatever that means) that Stern uses to base his calculations on is not appropriate.  (Read the entire article from the New York Times here.)

Also, check out the Jay Heinrich’s blog “Figures of Speech Served Fresh” that “rips the innards out of things people say and reveals the rhetorical tricks and pratfalls.”  Yesterday Heinrich’s entry “Yo Earth” is about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s question, “When? I mean when is the predicted cataclysm?”  Heinrich’s “Snappy Answer: The moment the rising ocean floods your basement.”

And, another nip of maple syrup is up for grabs…what potential presidential candidate said this:

“there’s no evidence to support global warming — none. It’s essentially cultural anthropology.”

A new study published  by the Geophysical Research Letters of the National Center for Atmospheric Research projects that the Arctic Ocean could be almost entirely open sea by 2040.  According to this article from the New York Times the study used seven supercomputer simulations to form their prediction–a projection that actually moves the melt timetable many decades earlier than previously expected.  

The article also reports on another study released seperately by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.  The study reports that this November’s average ice coverage in the Arctic was the lowest measured since 1979.  Walt Meier, one of the scientists involved with the research, explains “it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that things will be able to turn around, it would take several cold winters and cool summers, which seems unlikely under global warming conditions.”

Internationally, any politician who is serious about being elected needs to pay close attention to studies like these.  According to this article from Reuters, voters worldwide, specifically in Germany, Britain, France, Canada, the U.S., and Austria, view climate change as a make or break issue in choosing candidates.  The article points to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s landslide re-election victory in California and Tony Blair’s probable successor Gordon Brown, who has made global warming a top priority on his agenda. 

Today the New York Times published “The Cost of an Overheated Planet.”  This article reports that a growing number of business leaders, politicians, and even the most unlikely group of supporters–members from the power industry–are pushing for mandatory regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. 

James E. Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, a coal burning utility in the Midwest and Southeast, as well as the chairman of the Edison Electric Institute, explains “climate change is real, and we clearly believe we are on a route to mandatory controls for carbon dioxide, and we need to start now because the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive this is going to be.”

Studies have shown that the cost of curbing global warming is not going to be cheap–projections are at $120 billion a year in the U.S. alone.  However, Richard Cooper, a Harvard economist, compares these costs to energy price increases during the cold war: “The issues are similar in that you pay now so things are less risky in the future–it’s an insurance policy.  And in the cold war, we taxed ourselves fairly high to mitigate that threat.”  Experts believe that either a cap and trade system or a carbon tax are the best initial steps to combating climate change.  While both methods face criticism,  many believe the cap and trade system is the best initial step based upon the success of the  sulfur dioxide emission cap.

In other news…Sen. Hillary Clinton made her first official–but not official–confirmation that she is considering a run for President in 2008.  Clinton says she is “looking at where our country is, where I would like to see it go, listening to people who think I might make a contribution to that.” (Read the entire story from the Union Leader here.)