The Presidential candidates have started to make serious moves in unveiling their energy and climate plans. There is an awful lot of attention being paid to the candidates online and their plans are being dissected by a number of writers.
It seems that progressive bloggers are weighing in on democratic candidates’ climate plans. However, despite attacks by some conservative bloggers, republican candidates are also unveiling their climate plans.
Let me give you a few examples….
Matt Stoller, the hardest working guy in the progressive blogosphere, posted this statement.
Bill Richardson came out with his energy plan today. Dodd, Edwards, and Richardson are now out with proposals to deal with climate change, even as it becomes clearer every day that we dramatically underestimated the scope of the problem. I’m nearing the point where I cannot take a candidate seriously who does not make a drastic cut in carbon their top priority. If we don’t deal with this now, our civilization is over. It’s that simple.
The AP noted other actions being done by other democratic candidates, read the article:
The Democratic front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, also has called for an “Apollo program” on energy. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama recently lectured automakers for investing in bigger, faster cars while dependency on oil is jeopardizing U.S. security and the global environment. And Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd wants to double the average fuel economy for each automaker to 50 mpg by 2017.
Brian Beutler, in an interesting analysis, noted how democratic candidates are introducing different plans that are slowly approaching Al Gore’s proposal, read it here:
[Richardson's] plan was, in keeping with the pattern, slightly more extraordinarily ambitious than the previous plan introduced by a Democratic contender. First there was Edwards’ plan, then Dodd’s, and now Richardson’s, all asymptotically approaching the strength of Al Gore’s proposal.
While the republican candidates have distanced themselves from Gore, their plans are starting to sound a bit like his. The Concord Monitor noted that despite significant resistance by less climate-friendly republican candidates…both conservative and moderate republicans are moving forward… and not just John McCain.
Giuliani last month further raised the ire of conservative bloggers - already high due to his support for abortion rights, gun control and same-sex unions - when he told a business group in California, “I do believe there’s global warming,” according to a San Francisco Chronicle account. He said an “overwhelming number of scientists” cite “significant human cause.” But Giuliani criticized Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth for frightening people without offering solutions, though he hasn’t yet presented policy objectives of his own.
Brownback traded his SUV in for a hybrid car and is an advocate for ethanol, biodiesel and nuclear power. He’s made climate change a local issue, proposing legislation, which was stalled in committee, to give farmers in Kansas and elsewhere tax subsidies for preserving open space and capturing carbon in the soil, read it here
Mayor Bloomberg, who has been publicly considering a candidacy for the presidency, teamed up Bill Clinton and Ken Livingstone on unveiling billion dollar clean energy revolving style funds (I wonder where they got the idea?) to retrofit cities green, read it here.
The way it looks from here, the real “Unity ‘08″ might actually be a consensus that to be a presidential candidate these days, you need a real climate plan. Even if we don’t all agree on what that plan would be.
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Richard: Good post. Can’t understand why no one else commented. It’s a busy, crazy blogosphere. Two points in response: why did you miss Dodd’s carbon tax proposal, which is really the most interesting, if still somewhat vague, plank out there. Also, you should take a look at McCain’s bill (with Lieberman). I’m not saying it doesn’t favor the nuclear industry, which it does (and industry in general; but it also has a whole range of ambitious attempts at propelling technological innovation far beyond what any Democrat has spelled out. I’m not sure all of it makes sense or is good. But McCain-Liebermann is definitely worth a look if you want to see the best of political philosophy about technological innovation.
Also, I wanted to ask, my web newspaper “The Energy Independent” http://www.theenergyindependent.com is about to start a petition drive for a moratorium on new coal-burning plants. Do you know any college/youth movement groups working on the same or interested to find out about collaborating?
Let me know and if you like our site we can trade links. Thanks. jm
On the topic of a moratorium on new coal plants, Florida students are getting more engaged in the fight against dirty coal, and we would be interested in collaborating on such a petition
I think it’s great that you summed up what candidates are doing, and I’m excited to see the first serious round of candidates trying to outdo each other on climate. However, the frontrunners have yet to get serious about the kind of action we need. So far I feel like we (with the exception of Courtney) have not actually engaged presidential candidates in challenging their global warming platforms. We can’t just sit by and hope that they will improve. To make sure that any candidate we might elect has a strong climate platform, we need to ramp up the pressure while they are still fiddling with their platforms.
From my experience working on campaigns and for advocacy organizations, I can tell you that if you make enough noise the candidates will pay attention and will alter their current policy platforms. Its not enough to stand on the sidelines and say that candidates are corrupt or that you don’t want to be political. Everything is political and climate is no exception. On way that young voters are making their voices heard is through video messages to the presidential candidates like this one from Yale students: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feDWUnVR94M.
I would encourage everyone to do something similar and to tagged them “nohotair” and “climatechallenge.”
What other awesome ideas do folks have for changing the climate around climate?