Caucus Watch: Oceans Apart on Climate Issue
by Stacy Feldman - Jan 3rd, 2008
in
Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) rightly points out the Democrat-GOP divide on the climate change issue in the 2008 election. But he euphemistically calls it a “climate gap” when a giant ocean sits between the two parties' candidates on the issue -- too vast to be bridged, too important to be dismissed as politics-as-usual.
On the one side of the ocean, you have the Democrats, who have built substantive platforms that add up to US energy independence and solutions to climate change. Perfect? No, but they're light years ahead of the current administration.
All of the leading Democratic candidates support scientifically accepted targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. They support cap-and-trade mechanisms. They have plans to engage -- not obstruct -- in international post-Kyoto discussions. They will invest in energy efficiency and clean technology energy, like the wind and the sun. They say they’ll strip subsidies from Big Oil. And some even talk about a new energy economy that will produce millions of new green-collar jobs for Americans.
On the other side of the ocean, you have the Republican candidates, whose plans begin and end with business-as-usual. If you're pleased with America's current energy and (lack of) climate policies, $100 oil and a US in decline, then give the GOP another whirl in the White House and expect more of the same. Dependence on Middle Eastern oil, dirty coal, enormous nuclear subsidies, and international isolation.
(John McCain is the one pseudo-exception. He’s been knee deep in climate policy even before it was on the Democratic agenda though his presidential plans on climate surely disappoint.)
The Republican candidates consistently use the populist language of "energy independence" and "global warming" when there isn’t a shred of detail in the form of policy plans to back up their promises. Mitt Romney even said this yesterday, caught by the AmericaBlog:
I wanted to bring attention to a rather strange comment that Romney made during his stump speech. He began a thread about all the great things that George Bush has accomplished, including lowering taxes (no surprise there) and then added that Bush has "strengthened our economy by getting us off of foreign oil." Huh?
Huh is right.
This is not partisan vitriol. This is an inconvenient truth about the Republican candidates in 2008 that's so potentially destructive to America that even the conservative AEI chose to recognize it, not vehemently but certainly not proudly either.
And it’s by no means telling of the GOP as a whole. Republican Governor and climate crusader Arnold Schwarzenegger sued the US yesterday for denying California an EPA waiver that would help all states curb their global warming emissions.
So there’s plenty to be hopeful for in the GOP on the climate issue, just not with any of the frontrunner candidates for President of the United States.
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