Coping With a Warming Trend
A day after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an ominous report on climate change, Grist and Public Radio International’s Living on Earth sponsored a presidential forum in Los Angeles on climate and environmental issues. All Democratic and Republican candidates were invited to join Saturday’s forum, but only Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), John Edwards, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) participated. Those three largely reiterated already laid out plans to increase alternative energy use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Kucinich highlighted his proposed “Works Green Administration,” intended to bring environmentalism to the forefront of government attention.
Continuing with what has become one of his central talking points, Edwards linked the issue of climate change to what he called government corruption, and said the American people must “take the power out of the hands of oil companies, gas companies, Exxon Mobil, and their lobbyists in Washington.”
Clinton said policy change on the environment is largely dependent on a larger Democratic majority in Congress. “Our obstacle to getting anything through the Congress is the filibuster rule in the Senate,” she said. In a tense moment, an activist from anti-war group Code Pink heckled Clinton on her Iraq stance before being forcibly removed from the venue: “A million deaths on American hands, and she’s talking about the environment?”
That none of the top tier Republican candidates participated in the forum feeds the impression that Democrats have cornered the environmentalist voting base. While Mike Huckabee gave Grist an interview, separate from the forum, detailing his environmental and energy views, the Republican front runners have yet to pay much attention to the issue in their campaigns. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attended fundraisers Saturday in Austin and Houston instead of the forum, even though his two main opponents were there.
For more detail on the candidates’ climate change policy views, see CFR.org’s climate change Issue Tracker.
