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

For day two of the calm before the Labor Day weekend candidate storm, NHPR ran the second half of their two part radio story that detailed the Presidential candidates’ positions on climate change and energy.  Wednesday Amy Quinton focused on the Republicans and yesterday wrapped up the Democratic candidate positions on climate and energy.

Throughout the radio piece, Bruce Clendenning measured the candidates using the LCV framework which tracks candidate positions on carbon caps, fuel efficiency targets, renewable energy standards, energy conservation targets and candidates’ positions on new coal plants.  Clendenning felt that Edwards was the first candidate to lay out a plan on all five of the LCV elements but stated: “After that was Senator Dodd and Governor Richardson and three of them have all five of those across the board, they’ve got very specific proposals.”  

Clendenning felt that Clinton and Obama did not have specific proposals for all of the LCV elements, but that does not mean that the two are indistinguishable.  ”Obama talks more strongly about fuel efficiency standards,” said Clendenning, but ”Senator Clinton is talking a great deal about how we get our country more efficient, not just cars but in building structures and things like that.” 

Not one candidate has committed to, let alone articulated, a comprehensive climate action plan.  While it is promising that the candidates are talking about this issue, most of them are Senators and are accustomed to legislative action.  The climate change solution can not solely come in the form of a legislative fix.  Beyond legislation, there are six other benchmarks that comprise a comprehensive climate change plan.

Turning now from the NHPR story, Joe Biden’s joined Grist.org as the last of the Democratic candidates engage in their environmental interview series “How Green is Your Candidate?”  Biden cited his foreign policy experience as giving him a leg up on the other candidates to engage the international community around a climate change agreement.  International cooperation is an important non-legislative part of a climate action plan.  The Grist interviews are an excellent tool for those interested in examining the candidates on climate change. 

An interesting story ran on NHPR yesterday by Amy Quinton titled “Republican Presidential Candidates Tout Energy Independence.”  Her timely piece ran during a rare lull in candidate activity in New Hampshire.  The ‘lull’ is more like the calm before the storm with the barrage of candidates we are expecting this weekend and the Republican debate on Wednesday in Durham.  Quinton’s piece provides an important perspective on the environment and energy priorities of the Republican candidates from Republican opinion leaders in New Hampshire.

Her piece opened at New England Wood Pellet with Charlie Bass, former New Hampshire Republican Congressman and FOTPC.  “If I were a candidate,” said Bass, “I wouldn’t want to be talking about the war in Iraq right now, you don’t win on that issue, you don’t win on the social issues around here, or abortion, what you win on are the environmental issues, energy issues and the economy.”  Bass then added his opinion that Sen. John McCain was the only Republican candidate to have specific plan to address climate change, referencing his 65% reductions by 2050 legislation in the senate.  It may be true that McCain is the first to support specific legislation, and legislation is one piece of a comprehensive climate change action plan.

The radio story shifted to McCain’s competition, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Gov. Mitt Romney, and their unspecific love for renewable energy.  Giuliani and Romney continually profess their support for renewable energy as a way to achieve energy independence and combat global warming.  Paul Sanders, a first time voter and soon to be registered Republican worried that he had not seen specifics, just “general platitudes like we need better energy policy.”  The radio story recognized that the republican candidates like to talk about energy independence when asked about global warming.  Achieving energy independence means increased development of renewables as well as increased drilling for oil according to Giuliani and Romney.  This all may sound familiar if you listen to the audio clips TPC has compiled from around New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Carbon Coalition Co-Chair Ted Leach offered the report’s concluding remarks that articulating climate change action ”will become more and more important because Republican candidates, Democratic candidates are very cognizant of the fact that 162 towns in this state passed resolutions directly addressing the subject of global warming, and if you want New Hampshire’s votes, you need to pay attention to what those towns are saying because that’s the voice of NH right now.” 

Listen to Quinton’s radio piece now.

One of the most promising results of the New Hampshire Town Meeting Resolution that passed in 164 New Hampshire towns this March is the formation of numerous local energy committees.  The concluding sentence of the Climate Change Resolution: “We ask our selectmen to consider the appointment of a voluntary energy committee to recommend local steps to save energy and reduce emissions,” lead to an explosion of action on the local level that is a true indication of public sentiment in the Granite State. 

The Rockingham/Strafford Local Energy Committee Alliance, an alliance of the various energy committees in Rockingham and Strafford Counties, is holding a workshop on September 25, 6-8:30pm at the UNH Alumni Center in Durham.  This FREE meeting and workshop aims at forming cooperation, sharing lessons learned and resources on energy solutions between the various town energy committees.  This workshop is an essential tool for the members of existing and emerging energy committees.

The Alliance and the Carbon Coalition have invited staff members from each of the presidential campaigns to attend the meeting and hear first hand how local New Hampshire citizens are taking action into their own hands to reduce their carbon footprint, lower energy costs, and save money.  Many of the campaigns have reached out to hear how citizens are personally working to conserve and reduce carbon emissions in their own lives and communities and this is the perfect opportunity in New Hampshire.

Click for more information about the Rockingham/Strafford Energy Committee Alliance Workshop.

The summer of 2007 has been busy for both presidential candidates and voters from all around the state.  With energy from the Re-Energize NH March and all of our FOTPC’s, the presidential candidates should know by now that NH voters are very concerned about climate change. 

A recent report done by American Environics called “Energy Attitudes Summer 2007″ offers an analysis of national opinion research on energy and global warming as of June, 2007. 

Their studies found that the general public overwhelmingly believes global warming is occurring and is demanding action.  The report says that the debate over the existence of global warming is over and that an overwhelming consensus (70%) believes the government should be doing more to solve the problem.  Hmmm… does this sound oddly familiar?

While the report champions how strongly Americans support action to combat global warming, they conclude that it is not among the top few priorities of American voters.  They cite that only 23-48% of voters rank it as a very important issue.  A recent podcast from Now or Never Media reminds us that this doesn’t seem to be the case here in NH where 164 towns passed a resolution calling for national leadership on the issue.  The energy from these 164 towns, the 50+ emerging local town energy committees, the Re-EnergizeNH marchers, and FOTPC’s all over, reminds us that actions often speak louder than words.

The report indicates that voters strongly support large investments into clean energy sources to both achieve energy independence and deal with global warming.  This only furthers the message to presidential candidates that it is an issue on the mind of many voters and has a role in what America expects of our next president. 

The Environics report cites a Gallup poll from March 2007 that found significant support for “setting higher emissions and pollution standards for business and industry” with 84 percent of respondents favoring increased emissions standards.  Similarly, 79% of voters showed support for “imposing mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases.” 

The report also found that while voters appear very open to policies that can protect the environment and the economy, they often grow weary when there is talk about economic hardship.  They write: ”any proposal that either does not address energy costs or results in significantly higher energy costs will likely face stiff public opposition.” 

The report conclusions offer valuable insight on how voters feel about energy and global warming; it seems voters will be far more supportive when candidates address both environmental and economic elements of their energy plans.  It may help if presidential candidates have a comprehensive plan to combat climate change that addresses these concerns and includes elements like economy-wide emissions reductions and aggressive research and development outlined in our 7 benchmarks.