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

At a roundtable in Exeter yesterday, Barack Obama was asked if he could accomplish one thing as president, what would it be.

Obama and many of the other Democratic frontrunners consistently place global warming in their top five or even three priorities, but according to The Baltimore Sun, in yesterday’s roundtable with independents, Obama responded, “If it had to be just one thing, I would enact a bold energy policy.”

Obama was targeting the independent crowd by talking about climate and energy.  He understands the concern of NH independents about the climate issue, which was confirmed by the Mellman polling done one year ago.  The Mellman Poll found that 84% of potential independent NH primary voters support taking immediate action on climate change.

“I think that we could save so much money,” Obama explained, ”engineer such a resurgence in our economy and solve climate change, all at one time. And it would improve our national security posture.  It helps our economy, our environment and our national security.”

The new ARG poll released yesterday found that McCain is now tied with Romney at 26% in New Hampshire.  McCain has grown more and more vocal about climate change as January 8th approaches and his numbers continue to rise.  McCain is now running a climate change radio ad, targeting independents through direct mailings dedicated to climate change, hosting energy and climate change forums, and never ignoring the issue on the stump.

Both the McCain and Obama campaigns are banking on strong support from the large NH independent voting block, and they both seem to be using the climate issue as a key to secure the independent vote.

‘Stop Global Warming’ signs led the way to the Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris town halls in Berlin and Littleton this weekend.  An FOTPC was able to speak with Huckabee about climate change after the Berlin town hall.  Huckabee briefly mentioned energy independence and then directed the questioner to the Huckabee for President website.

Due to yesterday’s wonderful snowfall, Huckabee and Norris escaped the Granite State before they were asked what might have been the toughest question of their trip:

“Governor Huckabee, I have heard that there is no such thing as global warming.  Chuck Norris was just cold, so he turned the sun up.  As president will you ask him to turn the sun down?”

Early this morning, Senator Joe Lieberman endorsed McCain at a town hall in Hillsborough.  The duo previously worked together in the Senate on the McCain-Lieberman bill that would have set a cap on domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

The very first issue McCain talked about on the stump was climate change.  McCain briefly detailed the cap and trade legislation that he worked on with Sen. Lieberman and stressed the need for bi-partisan solutions.  McCain explained that he is a “free market” guy and would like to see a cap and trade system stimulate the market to reduce global warming pollution.  After devoting a good portion of his stump to climate change, McCain answered two further questions that were climate change-related. 

Check back for video footage soon.  In the meantime, check out McCain’s op-ed about global warming from yesterday’s Fosters. 

Hillary Clinton took questions at her two NH town halls this weekend and she did not have to ‘arrange’ a climate change question.  Straight from the North Pole, Santa flew down in his carbon neutral sled to ask Clinton about a new green economy.

Clinton spoke about including poorer nations in the global climate change response:

“I will say to the leaders of the most significant greenhouse gas emitting nations which includes the European Union, the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, India, South Africa, and Brazil that we have to meet every three months until we hammer this out hopefully within a year.   We don’t have any time to waste any longer.  The urgency of this is so intense that we have lost a lot of time.   We do have to reach out and include the fast developing countries, but not in a way that makes it seem like – ‘okay we got rich on the fossil fuel economy, but we don’t want you to follow our model.’   We need to be saying- ‘let’s work together, let’s experiment together.’  Let’s see this as a way of bringing the world together instead of being set one against another.   There are contributions to be made from every part of the globe to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.“

The candidates have recently been talking a lot about international climate agreements because of the Bali Summit which concluded on a more positive tone this weekend.

Yesterday’s GOP debate moderator Carolyn Washburn asked the candidates to raise their hands if they believe climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity.  Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani were the only four candidates to raise their hands.

“I’m not doing hand shows today,” Fred Thompson objected and said that he needed a minute to explain.

McCain quickly jumped in:

“Let me put it to you this way: Suppose that climate change is not real and all we do is adopt green technologies which our economy and our technology is perfectly cable of. Then all we’ve done is given our kids a cleaner world.  But suppose they’re wrong and climate change is real and we’ve done nothing. What kind of a planet are we going to pass on to the next generation of Americans?  It is real.  We can do it with cap-and-trade, with capitalist and free enterprise motivation.”

Giuliani weighed in on the science:

“Climate change is real. It’s happening. I believe human beings are contributing to it and the way to deal with it is through energy independence…and I think that our party should embrace this as an issue for us.”

Romney was eager to jump in and share what has become his global warming catch phrase:

“At the same time, we call it global warming, not America warming, so let’s not put a burden on us alone and have the rest of the world skate by without having to participate in this effort. It’s a global effort.”

Climate change finally provided the defining moment of a national debate and it is clear that some of the leading Republican candidates were eager to talk about this issue on the national stage.

Watch the video.