The presidential candidates-most of them, anyway-are actually talking about the environment this time around. Chalk it up to rising gas prices, a growing interest in energy independence, and, yes, ubiquitous Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. Credit California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Montana governor Brian Schweitzer, too, for proving that progressive environmental policies really can pave the way to election victory-no matter which party you're in.
Hillary Clinton:
Battle Cry: "The Bush administration has reversed decades of progress on the environment." "As president, I would restore these protections. I would tell my EPA administrator to protect the environment instead of polluters."
Green Chops: Since 2000, Clinton has spearheaded or co-signed nearly 400 environment-related bills, promoting issues from brownfield re-development to national-forest protection. "I've taken many actions specific to New York, like pushing for the Hudson River cleanup by GE and tackling the toxic legacy of 9/11," she says. "As First Lady, I focused on the environment's effects on children's health."
Power Points: "The country that split the atom and put a man on the moon can take the oil out of our tanks," she says on a campaign Web site podcast. Clinton proposes yanking oil-industry subsidies and depositing the savings (she estimates $50 billion over the next ten years) into a Strategic Energy Fund used to develop solar, wind, clean-coal, and nuclear power. Her Green Building Fund would bankroll energy-efficiency upgrades in schools and libraries to the tune of a billion bucks a year.
Barack Obama:
Battle Cry: "Some of [my environmental] policies are difficult politically," he said recently. "But being president of the United States isn't about doing what's easy. It's about doing what's right."
Green Chops: He's played tough with Detroit, in May calling carmakers' current path "unacceptable and unsustainable." He partnered with Republican senators-and fellow Democratic candidate Joe Biden-to sponsor the Fuel Economy Reform Act of 2007, calling for a 4 percent annual increase in fuel-economy standards.
Power Points: Like most of the Democratic candidates, Obama backs cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, and he has an ambitious cap-and-trade program to get there. "It is going to require a thoughtful approach that accounts for the possibility that electricity prices will go up and low-income people [will need to be] compensated," he says. He vows to make us 50 percent more energy efficient by 2030 and require a quarter of U.S. electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025.
Battle Cry: "Some of [my environmental] policies are difficult politically," he said recently. "But being president of the United States isn't about doing what's easy. It's about doing what's right."
Green Chops: He's played tough with Detroit, in May calling carmakers' current path "unacceptable and unsustainable." He partnered with Republican senators-and fellow Democratic candidate Joe Biden-to sponsor the Fuel Economy Reform Act of 2007, calling for a 4 percent annual increase in fuel-economy standards.
Power Points: Like most of the Democratic candidates, Obama backs cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, and he has an ambitious cap-and-trade program to get there. "It is going to require a thoughtful approach that accounts for the possibility that electricity prices will go up and low-income people [will need to be] compensated," he says. He vows to make us 50 percent more energy efficient by 2030 and require a quarter of U.S. electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025.
John Edwards:
"If you want to know who's most likely to lead in a serious way on the environment," says Edwards, "look who's been leading throughout the campaign." A former North Carolina senator (and the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president), Edwards told Iowa voters last March that greening the United States won't be easy, "but it's time to ask the American people to be patriotic about something other than the war."
Battle Cry: "The world is at crisis on the issue of climate change-it requires action now. And without American leadership, nothing will happen."
Green Chops: In March, Edwards became the first candidate to commit to an 80 percent reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050 (a pledge later picked up by candidates Clinton and Obama.) He has demanded a freeze on all U.S. coal-plant development until we find the technology to burn coal with zero emissions.
Power Points: Proposed a plan last spring to auction off greenhouse-gas-pollution permits to help pay for a $13 billion-a-year New Energy Economy Fund, which will be invested in emerging clean-energy industries-a move he believes can create one million "green-collar" jobs by 2025. (Obama later adopted a similar program.)
Dennis Kucinich:
"Sustainability is the path to peace," says Kucinich. The progressive congressman from Ohio would inject every federal agency, from defense to transportation, with a green agenda.
Battle Cry: "We need to see the connection between global warring and global warming, and it's oil."
Green Chops: "My philosophy of sustainability extends to everything I do," says Kucinich. "I've been living an essentially vegan lifestyle since 1995, and that has led me to a condition of extraordinary health and clarity." His proposed Works Green Administration would put clean-energy technologies like wind and solar in American homes, creating "millions" of jobs.
Power Points: "We need a requirement to move away from all carbon-based technologies and to fund fully all alternative-energy research that is in harmony with the environment."
Ron Paul:
Battle Cry: "Private property owners have a record of taking care of the environment much better than governments have ever done. Look at the Communists-they were very poor environmentalists."
Green Chops: One of the Republican party's most outspoken critics of the war in Iraq, Paul argues that "war causes pollution and excess expenditures in burning of fuel for no good purpose." He has cosponsored legislation offering tax breaks to bike commuters.
Power Points: Would end subsidies to energy industries, from oil to solar, and government support of alternative-energy innovation. "The government shouldn't be directing research and development, because they always misdirect it [and] send the money to the political cronies," he says. Paul has cosponsored bills offering tax incentives for the production and purchase of solar, wind, biomass, and fuel-cell energy.
Mitt Romney:
Battle Cry: "I don't know how much of the [climate] change is due to human activity," he said at a 2007 campaign rally in Iowa. "That's why I'll adopt what I call ‘no regrets' policies-policies that will allow us to become energy independent and will have, as one of their by-products, a reduction of the CO2 that we emit."
Green Chops: In 2004, Governor Romney introduced his Climate Protection Plan, which he said "encourages private citizens and requires state agencies and the state's large businesses to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions," although by an unspecified amount. He devised plans for energy-efficiency programs in state buildings and increased use of biofuels in the state's vehicle fleet.
Power Points: In campaign speeches, Romney advocates boosting domestic oil drilling, including opening up ANWR, and using diesel and jet fuels derived from coal: "Hitler during the Second World War-I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil-liquefied coal. That technology is still there," he said in a 2007 speech.
Rudy Giuliani:
Battle Cry: "When I think of 20 to 30 million people coming out of poverty in India and China, I say to myself, That's great-look at all the new customers. There are a lot of things we can sell to them-including energy independence."
Green Chops: "We have to accept the view that scientists have that there is global warming and that human operations, human conditions contribute to that," Giuliani has said. He supports subsidizing the development of energy sources such as wind and solar. He also touts the unfashionable idea of asking citizens to cut back on energy guzzling: "We have to convince the American people to conserve."
Power Points: Like other GOP contenders, Giuliani backs nuclear power and ethanol and strongly supports King Coal. "America has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil reserves," he said in July. "Aren't we better off relying on our coal reserves than seeing that money going to the Middle East?"
Mike Huckabee:
Battle Cry: "Not only as a Republican, but as a Christian, it's important to me to say to my fellow believers, ‘Look, if anybody ought to be leading on the environment, it ought to be us.'"
Green Chops: Huckabee vows to achieve energy independence by the end of his second term. "A country is not free if it can't produce three things for itself-its own food, its own fuel, and its own fighting apparatus," he says. In 1996, he helped pass an Arkansas constitutional amendment imposing an eighth-of-a-cent conservation sales tax to benefit natural resources.
Power Points: "I don't think we're going to find one big answer. I think it's going to be a combination of many that will include hydrogen, solar, wind, nuclear, and domestically produced fossil fuels." Like most other GOP contenders, he'd open ANWR and the continental shelf to drilling and supports a major nuclear-energy expansion. "France is almost completely nuclear, and it's not like they're a nation given to risky behaviors."
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