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.

With most of the candidates in Iowa, John McCain basically has the Granite State to himself until the January 4th mad-dash back to New Hampshire.  McCain touched upon three issues at each of his town halls this weekend: Pakistan, Iraq, and climate change.

In a crowded church basement in Dover McCain allowed questioners to follow up in what was a very conversational Q&A session.  A questioner asked McCain not to list new energy technologies when asked about R&D for clean energy but rather to speak about the specifics of an R&D program.

“First of all,” McCain started, “I totally agree with you on the approach: pure R&D on the part of the government, but then let the free enterprise system take over and not have the government continue after you do the initial R&D.”

When allowed to follow up, the questioner asked McCain how he would pay for it.  His response was McCainesque: “I would kill off a couple of the defense programs right now…I would veto this last appropriations bill that the president just signed…so there are plenty of places to find the money.”

Listen to McCain in Dover

In Londonderry, McCain detailed how he and Joe Lieberman, McCain’s “favorite Democrat,” proposed a cap-and-trade system that would function as a “free enterprise, market oriented, incentive” to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Listen to McCain in Londonderry

In other Primary climate change news, several institutional members of the Carbon Coalition recently released Clean Energy for America: Why the 44th President Must Put America on the Clean Energy Path.   This report explains why the next president must act immediately to address America’s growing energy crisis, and lays out a reasonable yet ambitious course for meeting America’s future energy needs with clean, renewable energy.

Along with releasing this important report, Environment New Hampshire and other conservation groups will ask all the candidates to pledge themselves to clean energy solutions and “act aggressively – beginning in his or her first 100 days in office – to lead America to a clean, secure energy future.”

TPC found another great letter in yesterday’s Foster’s:

“Climate change not an ‘other’ issue

To the editor: Last night I received a call from a Gallup pollster asking if I’d participate in their USA Today poll about the upcoming election. One question, in particular, was very easy for me to answer: “What issue is most important to you in this election?” The pre-selected responses were Iraq, taxes, health care, and the economy. When I told the interviewer that the most important issue to me was climate change, she responded that it would need to go into the “other” category.

Climate change is not an “other” issue. Climate change is the issue.

The heat-trapping gases we emit every day from our vehicles, factories, power plants, and homes are warming our planet. The images we see of melting arctic glaciers, rising sea levels, droughts and wildfires are, indeed, the face of climate change but so too are the subtler, less obvious changes such as the arrival of the brown recluse spider, which previously lived only in milder climate states.

It’s tough to take a complex and global problem like climate change and bring it down to our level, to how it impacts us. We don’t live in the Arctic Circle, nor Bangladesh and as Americans we will be sheltered somewhat from the worst consequences of our changing climate. But we’re not immune either. Our food doesn’t come from the grocery store. It must be grown on agricultural lands whose productivity is principally determined by stable climate and adequate rainfall. Hurricanes on the Gulf Coast affect us, wildfires in Alaska and California affect us, and the inevitable conflicts that result when much of the world doesn’t have enough food and fresh water most definitely affect us.

So, on Jan. 8, I’m taking climate change out of the “other” category and making it my primary focus. There are sharp differences among the presidential hopefuls on this issue and both parties have candidates who have detailed, economically viable plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For more information visit the Carbon Coalition website: www.carboncoalition.org/.”

Denise Blaha
Nottingham

Denise, I couldn’t have said it any better myself!

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