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

The Christmas season allowed Granite Staters many things: a festive new batch of sappy candidate commercials, two days without candidate events, another Patriots win, but most importantly a chance to compare and contrast the slight differences between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani’s climate change proposals.

The major climate policy divide still remains in the GOP with John McCain and Mike Huckabee as the only two GOP candidates favoring a domestic cap-and-trade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  But a slight difference persists between Romney and Giuliani, specifically concerning their views on U.S. involvement in an international response to climate change.

At a Hopkinton town hall this weekend, Giuliani vehemently opposed caps of any kind stating, “I like pursuing energy from positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.  I never think that it works when government puts on too many taxes, mandates, or burdens.”  Giuliani’s only mention of working internationally on climate change was his desire to sell efficient and alternative technologies to developing countries like India and China.  Typically when the topic arises, Giuliani quickly launches into an attack of the current Kyoto Protocol.

Giuliani’s reluctance to talk about international agreements is in contrast with Mitt Romney, who is speaking more and more about possibly joining a new Kyoto-like agreement.

On yesterday’s The Exchange Romney stated, “I do believe that we can work with other nations of the world to consider the widest array of options to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.  There are a number of different pathways to do so and caps are one.”

Laura Knoy followed up by directly asking Romney, “If there were a Kyoto-type protocol that did include China and India, would a President Romney sign it?”

Romney responded:

“If it includes the entire world and it is a fair inclusion of those other nations, of course I would sign on, but there is a very big gap.  They are going to say that they want to continue to grow dramatically, and they want us to reduce, and we are going to have a difficult time.”

Romney is not definitively stating that he will actively pursue a global treaty as president, but he is clearly more willing to join the international community in a climate agreement than is Rudy Giuliani.  Again, Giuliani believes that selling efficient technology to the developing world will sufficiently reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to avoid global warming.

Listen to Giuliani in Hopkinton

Listen to Romney on The Exchange