This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.
In Part I, we saw how conservatives were turning their backs on the moral issue of our time -- global warming.
Here we'll examine the many reasons conservatives should share ownership of this issue. Global warming and its solutions involve issues that are important to conservatives, progressives, Independents and even political agnostics. For example:
National security: "Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States," 11 retired admirals and generals concluded in a security analysis last April. "The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay."
Jobs: The global need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is arguably the biggest entrepreneurial opportunity the United States has known. Billions of the world's people need access to clean energy, a market of unprecedented scale. Here in the United States, according to an analysis by the Management Information Services in Washington, D.C., energy efficiency and renewable energy can create 40 million jobs by mid-century, at skill levels stretching from entry level to the highly technical.
Competitiveness: Two of the fastest-growing renewable energy technologies today -- solar electric cells and wind turbines -- were invented in the United States, but we gave up our lead to Japan, Germany and Denmark ... and China! We need to get it back. America remains the world's top innovator; unleashing that talent is a key to our economic security in a post-carbon world. If we want to be the global market leader in green technologies, little steps and tentative leadership won't do the job. As Sam Walton said in building his business empire: "Incrementalism is innovation's worst enemy. We don't want continuous improvement; we want radical change."
Conservation: A long-time theme among some progressive Republican leaders has been the need to put "conserve" back into "conservatism." Says Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich: "The group that I believe is the future of the American conservative movement and indeed the future of American politics are those who favor a green conservatism." As governor of California, Ronald Reagan got it, too. There is an "absolute necessity of waging all-out war against the debauching of the environment," he said in 1970 as American celebrated the first Earth Day. Since Teddy Roosevelt, presidents of both parties have stated a commitment to the health of the environment and, more recently, the climate.
Freedom: "The real inconvenient truth about climate change," says Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, "is that some people are losing their rights and freedoms because of the actions of others -- in either the quality of the air they breathe, the geography they hold dear, the insurance costs they bear or the future environment of the children they love."
Family: As Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) put it to Couric: "Let me put it this way to you. Suppose I'm wrong, there's no such thing as climate change, we adopt green technologies. Then we've just left our kids a better world. Suppose I am right and we do nothing? Then what kind of planet have we handed to our children?"
America's Obligation to Lead: "The nations of the world must make common cause in defense of our environment," President George H.W. Bush said on Sept. 9, 1989. "And I promise you this: This nation, the United States of America, will take the lead internationally."
The silence from the conservatives running for the GOP nomination (other than McCain) can't be blamed on a paucity of ideas. Any candidates looking to build a climate platform can turn, among other places, to the Presidential Climate Action Plan -- more than 300 specific proposals for the next President to implement during his or her first 100 days. TIME magazine calls it "The Global Warming Playbook."
Many of its proposals could have come from the Republican caucus: $1 billion in incentive awards for breakthrough technologies, small business development as the engine to move technologies to market, an end to energy subsidies that amount to corporate welfare, carbon pricing to put some magic back into the marketplace, and even the elimination of the U.S. Department of Energy in favor of a smaller and more nimble agency.
Back in 2005, before they threw their hats in the ring for the presidency, McCain and Clinton made a joint visit to Alaska to witness the effects of climate change first hand, sending the signal that this is an issue that both parties should embrace.
So far, the rest of the GOP's presidential hopefuls are avoiding the embrace. Freedom, morality, competitiveness, a healthy economy, national security -- they all are traditional conservative issues. They also happen to be climate-action issues. Do conservatives really want to give them up for adoption?
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Comments
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goforthegold Posted 9:27 pm
23 Dec 2007
I took this quiz on the environment at http://www.mystudiyo.com/activity.php?act=526
and it was awesome. Before I just cared about the environment but now I understand all the serious problems that are causing horrible changes to mother nature.
I think everyone should take this quiz and start learning more instead of just caring!
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:52 am
24 Dec 2007
(And many "Green" organizations also like the Center for American Progress, and the National Resources Defense Council, and even somewhat the Union of Concerned Scienctists)
And a Gingrich / Nordhaus style push for "voluntary technology".
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Supporting fake options does two things.
It removes dollars, attention, and legistlation away from focusing on renewable electricity.
It allows politicians who aren't green to still appear green.
Much in the same way that if you were to call the "No Child Left Behind Act" allows politicians to look "compasionate" about public schooling and children. All the while what it does in practice, is remove funding for public schools in low income communities, and generally weaken the public school system as they are forced to teach to a federal test, rather than focus on actual comprehension.
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The Rightwing is already quite good at "appearing" green, while derailing serious green proposals.
But they aren't very good at actually being green.
But the problem with politics,
Perception is Reality.
Especially in an election year.
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randino Posted 9:37 pm
24 Dec 2007
(2) In order to get really serious about the climate, the GOP would have to put a knife in the back of industries & interests that it has been loyal to since the Civil War. It is not going to happen.
(3) In order to get really serious about the climate, the GOP will have to machine gun a whole stable of its sacred cows. It will have to renounce its loyalty to the Market God, embrace regulation, and reign in corporate power. Not going to happen.
(4) Romm thinks that the current regime that rules the GOP is conservative. It is not. It is radically reactionary, and high on its list of enemies is the environmental movement - which in some GOP venues is a substitute bogeyman for communism.
(5) Romm is blind to the power of ideology in the current GOP and how that ideology becomes welded to the identity of its activists & stalwarts. For the past generation one of the main requirements to be a PC Republican is to be a climate change denier. The current ruling generation in the GOP will have to pass from the scene before this will change.
While reading Romm's piece an old tune kept echoing in my mind. "Wouldn't It be Nice" by the Beachboys. Well, it would be nice, but for the forseeable future we will find slim pickings in the GOP when it comes to progressive, much less sane climate policies.
The GOP must fall in 2008 or we can kiss this planet good bye.
1-20-09
Randy Cunningham
Randy Cunningham
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:03 am
25 Dec 2007
Employment-requirement (which is often masked as "jobs-creation") is not a virtue. Requiring more work for the same given amount of value makes a society poorer, rather than richer. To make society richer, the ratio of new-value/work must be increased, rather than decreased.
Nuclear power (being dense) tends to increase the new-value/work ratio.
Discrete energy-efficiency and diffuse-power types such as wind and solar tend to decrease the new-value/work ratio -- by doing so, they tend to increase human slavery.
A wind- and solar- powered world, with much discrete energy-efficiency, would be a relatively medieval world.
if you're referring to torture as being "medieval," make sure you're using it to describe something really, unquestionably, horribly brutal, not just something that is bad.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:19 pm
25 Dec 2007
Certainly there is the problem with many Progressives that think "The Truth will Set you Free"
When really what you need to change isn't peoples access to facts.
You need to actually change their perception of how they interpret facts. Otherwise it's just in one ear, and out the other.
Like water off a duck.
George Lakoff does a wonderful job in covering this cognitive disconnect, however the LA times also does a pretty good job specifically with global warming:
Although all human societies have moral rules about food and sex, none has a moral rule about atmospheric chemistry. And so we are outraged about every breach of protocol except Kyoto. Yes, global warming is bad, but it doesn't make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don't feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats to our species, such as flag burning. The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.
The third reason why global warming doesn't trigger our concern is....[More]
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0702-26.htm
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