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

Before Christmas, LCV was complaining that the media elite were dissing climate change and presidential politics.  If Russert, Stephanopoulos, and Couric won’t listen to LCV, maybe they will follow in the footsteps of one of their peers: The New York Times.

The New York Times editorial board decided to take a look at the candidates’ climate change positions in yesterday’s editorial “The One Environmental Issue.”  The editorial found that in past years Democratic and Republican strategists believed that climate change was “too complicated and forbidding an issue to sell to ordinary voters” and therefore was not an issue in 2000 or 2004 elections, but now they say, “the times have certainly changed.”

Of the Democrats, the editorial now says:

“Still, the country is a long way from a comprehensive response equal to the challenge. That is what the Democratic candidates are proposing. Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards, Gov. Bill Richardson and Representative Dennis Kucinich have all offered aggressive plans that would go beyond the Senate bill and reduce emissions by 80 percent by midcentury (90 percent in Mr. Richardson’s case), much as called for in the United Nations reports.

Internationally, the Democrats say they would seek a new global accord on reducing emissions to replace and improve upon the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Winning agreement among more than 180 nations will be slow-going, so several candidates, including Mrs. Clinton, have suggested jump-starting the process by bringing together the big emitters like China very early in their administrations.”

Two months ago, The New York Times first highlighted “the GOP Divide” on climate change after Mike Huckabee joined John McCain as the only Republicans to endorse a cap on carbon emissions.

This Times editorial described McCain as “authentic pioneer” in the senate on climate change, and “The other leading Republican candidates — Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee — talk about energy issues almost exclusively in the context of freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil. All promote nuclear power, embrace energy efficiency and promise greener technologies. Only Mr. Huckabee has dared raise the idea of government regulation, embracing, at least theoretically, the idea of a mandatory cap on emissions. The rest prefer President Bush’s cost-free and demonstrably inadequate voluntary approach, which essentially asks industry to do what it can to reduce emissions.”

When so much of the campaign news is focused on anything but the actual issues, it is refreshing to finally see national coverage of the climate issue and the presidential campaign.

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.

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.