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

Joe Biden faced a pair of climate change questions campaigning in yesterday at the NEC College Convention 2008 in Manchester.  Three NH youngsters sat down with Senator Biden and talked about the economic opportunities of solving climate change.

“We can change the world” Biden proclaimed as he scribed his John Hancock on red signs reading “Make Global Warming a Priority.”

Biden then took a minute to share a few of his climate plans:

“The first thing that I would do is to issue an executive order saying that not one single, solitary federal dollar will be spent to buy a fleet automobile that does not get 40 MPG.  Secondly, not a single solitary building will be built that wasn’t green.  The reason for that is simple.  That will cause thirty other states in the nation to follow. That will create a pool of money of a half a trillion dollars and all of a sudden you will see the economic system begin to work.”

“I will immediately call for the reconvening of Kyoto II.  I would immediately begin to do joint projects with China and India in order to help them gain control of their greenhouse gasses.”

Watch Biden speak with the youth in Manchester.

The Republican candidates met up in Florida last night for the CNN/YouTube debate.  An op-ed from USA Today predicted that the candidates wouldn’t field a question from the infamous snowman, but hoped that this would ”clear the way for a more serious grilling of the GOP candidates about climate change.”  Unfortunately, there was no discussion on energy or climate change. 

Interesting fact: Both last nights’ debate and the last Democratic debate in Vegas were both sponsored by the ‘clean coal’ industry.  Hmmmmmmmmm.

At a carbon and nuclear-free energy symposium yesterday, Dennis Kucinich took the opportunity to tout his climate change plan.  Here are a couple quotes:

“What I advocate is making government an instrument of sustainability.  Imagine an American president who tells the American people that every area of the American government will be involved in sustainability?”
 
“The energy department will stop incentivizing oil, coal and nuclear.  Take those subsidies out.  Isn’t it interesting that we are being told that nuclear is so cheap, but the government has to fund the industry just to prop it up?” 

Listen to the audio: 1 2 3

Two recent national media pieces show that people outside of New Hampshire are recognizing that the GOP candidates are all talking about climate change.  ABC News ran an internet piece “The Green Gap: Republican Candidates and Climate Change,” and the Prince of Darkness himself, Robert Novak wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled “The False Conservative.”

The ABC piece separated John McCain from the rest of the GOP field:

“‘Most of the Republican candidates are talking about core Republican issues,’ says political analyst Stuart Rothenberg.’ They talk taxes. They talk about the size of government. They talk about national security. Those issues are what Republicans are comfortable talking about, and that’s what most Republican voters want to hear. McCain is the exception.’”

Anybody who has attended a New Hampshire town hall, read this blog, or seen last January’s polling data that found that 82% of potential Republican primary voters favor taking action now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions knows that NH Republican voters want to hear about this issue.  Energy conservation, energy security, and the environment are fast becoming core Republican issues in New Hampshire.

ABC News wrapped up Huckabee’s climate position:

“Huckabee calls climate change ‘a spiritual issue.’ The Council on Foreign Relations analysis said: ‘In another interview, [he[ got more specific, saying, ‘We ought to be moving rapidly toward energy resources that don’t have a greenhouse gas effect.”

The ABC synopsis does not accurately represent Huckabee’s entire climate position.  They omitted that in New Hampshire Huckabee endorsed a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and consistently urges true conservatives to conserve energy.

Robert Novak picked up on Huckabee’s endorsement of a cap and trade system and brought it up in his op-ed “The False Conservative” stating:

“Calling global warming a ‘moral issue’ mandating ‘a biblical duty’ to prevent climate change, he (Huckabee) has endorsed a cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.”

To suggest that a cap and trade system is “anathema to the free market” is false.  Cap and trade is a market based solution that encourages market competition.  Our current energy policy is a true anathema to the free market because it provides massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, not allowing cleaner and more secure energy technologies to compete on a level playing field.

FOTPC’s and climate voters were out in full force last night holding up signs, wearing t-shirts and passing out stickers at the John Edwards town hall in Manchester.  With only 42 days left until the NH Primary, you can expect to see a lot more global warming visibility around the Granite State.  Let us know if you would like to join in the fun!

After noting global warming briefly in his stump speech, Edwards took a question from an FOTPC who asked if he would put money into R&D for coal and nuclear.  Edwards took the opportunity to emphasize that he “does not support the building of new nuclear power” because we don’t have a safe way to dispose of the waste, we cannot protect them adequately given the terrorist environment we live in and it is very expensive and timely to get them online.

Concerning coal, Edwards said that he is against building new coal-fired power plants “unless and until we have the capacity to capture the carbon and sequester it; we do not have it today.”  Edwards stated that “I think that it does make sense for America to be investing in the development of that technology, because in the forseeable future, coal is still part of our power source, part of our energy needs … but I think we should not be building anymore coal-fired power plants and making the problem worse until we have that technology.”