A New Trend?
February 13th, 2007 by Carbon CoalitionAccording to this opinion piece by Sen. John McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, we’ve finally reached “a turning point on global warming.” The Senators are pushing for their reintroduced bill, the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, to “move forward in a bipartisan fashion” just as the issue of global warming needs move. “Working in a bipartisan fashion, Congress will enact a law that curbs global warming even as it strengthens the economy.”
The new trend in Washington is to lead by “carbon-footprint” example. Barbara Boxer is swapping light bulbs and driving hybrids, Vermont Representative Peter Welch is offsetting the carbon emissions from his two offices and his travel, and now presidential wannabe Tom Vilsack has announced that he going to be the first presidential contender in history to have a carbon neutral campaign. Josh Earnest, communications director for Vilsack, said there is “No question that this is one of the, if not the most important issue in this presidential campaign. It affects national security, the economy, even the health care system.'’ Will other campaigners follow in his footsteps? We hope so. (Read the Associated Press story here.)
In case you were unaware, which is highly unlikely with all of the media attention, Barack Obama visited the Granite State yesterday for the second time in two months. He drew over 3,000 attendees at a “town hall” event at the University of New Hampshire. Obama covered a variety of issues including “energy” (global warming was not mentioned in this article). He said ”the United States should take three steps immediately: Make vehicles more fuel efficient; develop biofuels and other alternative energy sources; and set up a cap-and-trade program to regulate the amount of carbon dioxide companies can emit, but allow companies who emit less to sell credits to companies who need to emit more.” Is he going to follow Vilsack and put his money where his mouth is?
And, we’ve added another to the list. Today Mitt Romney officially declared his candidacy for the presidential nomination (read the story here).
