Red, Green, and Blue

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Oh, I admit it; I’ve fallen hard for Obama. Perhaps it is his handsome face or eloquent manner of speech, or perhaps it is because he is the first viable candidate (sorry Kucinich and Nader) to speak the truth. First, Obama opposed the gas tax holiday, designed to distract Americans from the bigger picture of our energy usage. Now, he is blaming the Iraq war for America’s utter failure as a climate leader.

Shortly after last week’s primaries, Obama stated:

I think the way we have run this war in Iraq has lessened our ability to move our allies. It has led us to ignore the critical needs for us to focus on a sound energy policy in this country. It has left us unable to lead on critical global issues like global warming. And it has led us to neglect what ultimately is the most important thing to keeping America safe, and that is having an economy that is the envy of the world and that gives us the resources and the power to project ourselves around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Tries to woo Western Dems by touting climate change as key

It might be argued, that the only way for John McCain to win in November’s general election would be by setting himself apart from President Bush enough to attract support from the middle - and one way he is doing that is by emphasizing his stance on environmental issues. Last week, the Straight Talk Express began a PR campaign aimed at courting independent-minded environmentalists, especially in the swing states.

In remarks he prepared to give at a wind technology firm in Portland, Oregon, on Monday, the Arizona senator said he would seek international accords to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and would offer an incentive system to make businesses in the United States cleaner. McCain said:

“We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.”

The presumptive Republican presidential candidate is using his stance on energy and the environment to draw distinctions between himself and President Bush, whose approval rating has sunk to a near-record low of 28% (Pew, Gallup, USA Today). Read the rest of this entry »

I came across some interesting bipartisan ads today. One featuring Newt Gingrich with Nancy Pelosi and the other featuring Al Sharpton with Pat Robertson. In the ads each of these “odd couples” sat together on a couch and presented a united front urging the public to embrace efforts for climate change. I loved it!

Then I discovered the ads were produced by the We Campaign which was started by The Alliance for Climate Protection. My heart almost stopped beating when I realized I absolutely loved something that has its roots in the efforts of Al Gore. Yes, I am a conservative, and I admittedly have a strong aversion to Al Gore. Nonetheless, I repeatedly returned to We and to the ads. I overcame my stubborn ideals (my first instinct was, I cannot promote this because it belongs to Al Gore) and decided to embrace the cause (my heart said, you are passionate about bi-partisan efforts in environmentalism and you must promote this). Read the rest of this entry »

The US government likes to declare war on issues in which there are no clear enemies, while physically fighting undeclared wars against foreign people. President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer and recreational drugs. Will George W. Bush declare war on climate change?

Tim Hurst wrote, “I would argue that the only opportunity the current president has to leave a positive and lasting legacy is to take ownership of the climate change and global warming issue” in response to rumors that Bush supports a new climate proposal. Could this be Bush’s declaration of war on climate change? I hope not, as the United States has failed to previously win a war on cancer, poverty, or drugs, and these wars have gone on for decades. We don’t have decades to solve the problem of climate change; we must do it now. Of course, when Bush is involved, I have to be skeptical of his true intentions, especially when the Associate Press reports the Bush administration is motivated to avoid a “train wreck” of climate change regulations. I suspect the Bush climate policy would be a watered down version of these other regulations, besides the White House may already be retreating on the issue. Read the rest of this entry »

For Teddy Roosevelt it was the creation of our system of National Parks. For Richard Nixon it was the passage of landmark environmental reforms found in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. For Bill Clinton it was an eleventh-hour preservation of millions of acres of public lands. For George W. Bush it will be tackling the issues of global warming and climate change.

huh?

In light of my recent post about the demoralizing effect this administration has had upon EPA scientists and other agency ‘lifers’, I was more than just a little surprised to hear about the story leaked in Monday’s Washington Times that reports President Bush is “poised to change course and announce as early as this week that he wants Congress to pass a bill to combat global warming, and will lay out principles for what that should include.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined on Monday to confirm rumors that action was imminent, though she would not rule it out. She said the administration’s discussions are building toward an expected debate on climate change in the Senate in June [watch video of White House press conference here].

If President George W. Bush throws his support behind mandatory carbon dioxide regulations, it would indeed be a major shift away from his insistence that placing binding caps on emissions would harm the U.S. economy. Read the rest of this entry »

If you ask me, one of the best things about this election season thus far, is that voters who never thought their state’s caucus or primary would actually matter in deciding a presidential nominee, are finding out that they do matter - quite considerably. Our friends over at EnviroWonk did an excellent job of covering the recent presidential candidates’ whirlwind visits to Missoula, Montana. As a digital media addendum, I’ve posted a 3-minute clip of Barack Obama speaking on climate and energy policy from Missoula. A couple of nuggets from the Obama stump:

• “Exxon Mobil made $11 billion last quarter; last quarter! And we’re melting the polar ice caps in the bargain. It’s a bad deal all around - unless you’re ExxonMobil”
• “There doesn’t have to be a contradiction between good environmental policy and good economic policy.”

Both of our “green” democratic candidates were recently heard stumping for “clean” coal technologies! I have two big problems with this: 1. There is no such thing as “clean” coal (see #2), And, 2. We are decades away from clean “coal” technology being widely deployed anyway. In the same amount of time we could deploy an arsenal of solar and wind farms that could give us a similar amount of electricity without the mercury, carbon, and particulate pollution. All the while, keeping our mountains in tact!

“Clean” Coal is a joke — so this cartoon pretty much writes itself…
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Very funny video clip from Saturday Night Live showing Al Gore giving a Presidential address. One of the best lines is when he says that there is no need to worry about hurricanes and tornadoes because of the “anti-hurricane and tornado machine I was instrumental in helping to develop.”

This cartoon was inspired by Bush’s recent intervention to weaken limits of smog-forming ozone in our air.

John Walke, the Clean Air director for the National Resources Defense Council, called the intervention an “unprecedented and unlawful act of political interference”.

With all due respect Mr. Walke, after the past 7 years unprecedented and unlawful moves seem to be the norm.

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When the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act last December, the bill included a passage that could effect Canada’s oilsands, and that has the Canadian government nervous.

The law prohibits federal procurement of fuels that produce more global warming emissions than conventional sources. Canada is concerned because the fuel taken from the oilsands is considered alternative fuel under the new energy act and it produces more global warming emissions than other sources. It complicates things because U.S. firms have major investments in the oilsands and the U.S. government currently gets a lot of fuel from there, so the U.S. essentially passed a law that could jeopardize this arrangement. In the province of Alberta, the oilsands represent the second largest oil reserve on the planet after Saudi Arabia.

Read the rest of this entry »