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

Let’s see, I’m supposed to start out with how we are too far out to take polls too seriously and that there is a lot of time for changes in the race, etc. But UNH’s Survey Center is conducting polls of NH voters, so here we go….

The most striking news is on the GOP side where Mitt Romney has continued his steady rise in the polls and now has the lead in NH, passing both McCain and Giuliani who both dropped sharply since last month’s poll. In the race of undeclareds, Fred Thompson leads Newt Gingrich.

On the Democratic side, it’s lonely at the top. The top tier is really only Hillary Clinton at this point, the second tier is occupied by Barack Obama, and everyone else is mired in the third tier. The most recent resident of Tier #3 is John Edwards who finds himself with the same polling numbers as the undeclared Al Gore and in danger of being overtaken by a (relatively) surging Bill Richardson who has hit double-digits. On the question of the top issue in the campaign, “Other” tops every issue other than the War in Iraq at 23%. It would be interesting to see how many of those people chose climate change.

Bill Richardson is out with another of his “job interview” tv spots. This one focuses on global warming and the progress made in New Mexico during his governorship. Why is this notable? Governor Richardson is now the second Democratic candidate (Dodd was the first) in the press- and poll-designated “second tier” to try to distinguish himself from the pack by touting his experience dealing with climate change. This is encouraging as it is an acknowledgement by the people with the most at stake (the candidate, his staff) that global warming is a crucial issue in the primary and one that allows their candidate to separate from a pack that agrees on so much (Iraq, immigration, etc.)

There is some interesting commentary on the web about Democrats and global warming. First, at the American Prospect’s blog, Ezra Klein talks about how Democrats’ unifying national security issue is global warming (it’s under the heading, “Energy for All.”) The NY Times is scathing in its assessement of congressional Democrats’ work on global warming, laying most of the blame on Michigan congressman John Dingell who is intent on protecting his constituency (i.e. the automotive industry) at the expense of real progress on global warming. Interestingly, they point to acid rain legislation during the first President Bush’s administration as a model for how to, if not bring Dingell around, at least encourage him to step aside. Of course, this echoes how the Acid Rain Resolution effort in 1983 was a precursor to the NH Climate Change Resolution effort this year. Hopefully Dingell’s congressional efforts will continue this parallel.

Today I begin a three-day run of pinch-hitting for your usual blogger. Before leaving, however, she did go to see John Edwards in Bedford on Friday. In addition to snapping this photo of the candidate holding a Carbon Coalition sign (the bottom half says “Global Warming,” in case you were wondering) she asked him a question about what he would do if he was representing the US at the G8 Summit. He doesn’t answer the exact question, but his response was comprehensive. Here you go:

“Well, I think America has no credibility when a dealing with global warming because we are the worst polluter on the planet…we cannot go to China and India and fashion a global solution to this problem until we first clean up our act. So here’s what I’d do, let me give you specifics….”

He then goes into specifics: 1. reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050; 2. auction carbon credits and use ”a big chunk” of that money to invest in renewables, develop carbon sequestration/capture technology, and build the most fuel-efficient vehicles on the planet; 3. raise fuel-efficiency standards; 4. ban building more coal-fired power plants; and, 5. open up electric grid to greater competition. With these done we can “go to China and India and say, we want to work with you…and we we ought to do is say work with us, we want to solve this problem forever. We’re cleaning up our act and we either have developed or we are developing the technology that will make that successful and we would like to make that technology available to you as part of the bargaining process.” Check back later this week for the audio.

Meanwhile, we are told that Senator Obama is experiencing a disconnect between the needs of his current constituency in Illinois and his wished-for constituency (the US of A), on the issue of liquid coal. Via Anne Havemann in Maryland:

“Some members of Congress are claiming that [liquid coal] is the right way to move America beyond oil. However, this tranportation fuel made from coal would actually double the global warming pollution coming from our cars and planes! Who supports this? A number of Senators including none other than Senator Barack Obama. That is totally unacceptable from a Senator who, on his website, has this to say about global warming: ‘We need to take steps to stop catastrophic, mandmade climate change. If we do not act, the consequences will be devastating for future generations, especially for the poorest global populations.’ “

For more information, visit the US Climate Emergency Council website.

To put this in context, China - nothing if not a beacon of environmental responsibility (joking, of course) - is considering abandoning its liquid coal projects.

It’s official, well, kind of.  Yesterday, after several days of negotiations at the G8 Summit in Germany, the US announced that it was going to “consider seriously” a plan that will cut worldwide greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.  Basically, when all was said and done the US agreed that there will be more meetings, more discussions, and more negotiations on this issue in hopes that a continuing dialogue will eventually lead to a possible agreement. ???  Yeah, that’s what we think too.  But if you can look beyond the ambiguity and negotiations about more negotiations, the end result–that the US will even consider joining an international agreement concerning greenhouse gas emission targets–is quite significant.  (Read the entire New York Times article here.)

Global warming discussions in-country have been a little more cut and dry.  A new bill drafted bill by Rep. Rick Bouchard of Virginia aims to prohibit the EPA from granting California - and the 11 other states following in its footsteps - the waiver necessary to impose state tailpipe emission standards.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has vowed to fight the bill every step of the way: “Any proposal that affects California’s landmark efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or eliminate the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions will not have my support.”  (Read the entire article from the Washington Post here.)