We’ve seen in Part I that The Political Climate is Changing. How should Presidential candidates talk about climate in the 2008 campaign?
My advice to the candidates is to love the global warming Deniers and Delayers to death and to handle the economic issue head-on. Invite them into constructive discussion. Elevate the dialogue. Emphasize without stop or deviation that climate change is not a partisan issue and it should not be a political issue. Talk about the massive new global markets awaiting innovative American technologies, about climate change as the next great challenge for the nation’s genius, about how tackling climate change is our path to security and prosperity in the 21st Century. It happens to be the truth.
Follow Barrack Obama’s example of truth-telling. He had the guts earlier this year to tell the Detroit Economic Club that we need to raise CAFÉ standards. He won praise from TIME columnist Joe Klein this week for refusing to pander to voters.
Klein spent a day with Obama in Iowa and watched him handle a question about global warming. Obama talked about the need for a cap-and-trade regime to reduce carbon emissions, then said: “One of the themes of this campaign is to tell voters what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear…So I’ve got to tell you there will be a cost to this — and the utility companies will pass it along to consumers. You can expect a spike in electricity prices.” Then he added the critical message: New technologies will eventually bring prices back down.
Obama also could have said this:
We are able and obligated to help those who will have the hardest time adjusting to climate change and to climate policy. We will use revenues from carbon trading to ensure equity and social justice in the transition to a new economy. Millions of new jobs — from entry level to high-tech — will be created to make that transition happen. We will improve energy efficiency economy-wide to insulate consumers from the downside of carbon pricing. And besides, the least expensive, least disruptive thing we can do is to act now. If we don’t, people will suffer, communities will suffer, businesses will suffer, the economy will suffer, our children will suffer and solutions will become more and more expensive. We can solve this problem. It won’t be easy, but we can do it and we will.
As developments unfold, the candidates must continue building a public mandate for bold leadership at every level — from mayors and governors to the Congress and White House and from consumers to corporate CEOs. They should help the voters connect the dots. We need not debate the nuances of climate science or rely on polar bears in the Arctic to be the endangered mascots of global warming. The evidence is showing up all around us here at home. The scientists won’t say it, but the records being set year after year for wild fires, drought, heat and floods, the migrating wildlife, the delayed falls are the growing consequences of climate change.
The candidates should help the public connect the dots, too, on the other key issues of the campaign. Iraq and health care will remain dominant voter concerns in this election cycle, but they should not eclipse global warming. They are linked. Oil is at the root of our misadventures in the Middle East, and it is at the root of global warming. And climate change is a critical public health issue, from heat waves and natural disasters to expanding disease vectors. Unabated, it will break the back of an already strained health care system.
Global warming is as complicated and crucial an issue as the world has yet faced. It will test our character and determine our future. That makes this the most important and interesting presidential election ever. Gore predicted as much. As usual, he’s probably right.
– Bill B.
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Obama said
“We will use revenues from carbon trading to ensure equity and social justice in the transition to a new economy”
Could somebody explain how revenues are generated from the “carbon trading” he is talking about and how they will be diverted to investments that promise equity and justice.
It’s simple and all part of Obama’s new vision for America. Someone will profit from carbon trading. Profits are immoral in the new America and will be confiscated. They will be distributed to those who vote the right way. We will all be better off when government controls wages, prices and the means of production. The individual must submit to the collective. Or, it could just be yet another inane statement by a nice looking not yet ready for prime time senator.
Thanks for the help.
Could somebody explain how revenues are generated from the “carbon trading” he is talking about and how they will be diverted to investments that promise equity and justice.
Eric-
Obama proposes auctioning 100% of the carbon credits used in a cap-and-trade plan, rather than just giving them away to current emitters.
Thanks Jay,
This is a little better than Slo Mo Joe’s Schuck and Jive. But it is still ineffective.
Auctions work for RF Spectrum. It simply would not work to begin taxing radio traffic at an increasingly higher rate until the channels become unclogged enough that the most compelling use of the airwaves can operate.
Conversely, auctioning off CO2 emission rights will not generate enough revenue to install progammable thermostats. How much should I, or my proxies in the petroleum business, bid to cover the tree or four times a month I find driving my car a compelling transportation choice.
Who is going to negotiate/dictate what the enormous one time, up front charge against future emissions is going to be?
Analogous to the RF spectrum example, we only have one channel to share on this planet. Accessing that channel needs to be made more expensive so that the unthinking are not tempted to braodcast reruns of Charly’s Angels, amatuer porn or other pulp on it continuously. The revenue from this TAX needs to be diverted into upgrading all the tube amps to more efficient semi-conductors.