PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- No less than 50 New Hampshire scientists, experts, and academics from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds have signed onto a letter urging all candidates for public office to accept the "overwhelming" evidence that climate change is real, and that action must be taken both to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for its impact.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the letter is in part a response to the wave of climate change denial now sweeping over the Republican Party. And nowhere is that anti-science trend more obvious than in the words of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates.
It began with Tim Pawlenty, the first serious Republican contender to drop out of the race for president. As governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty governed as a moderate on the environment. He supported cap and trade by signing his name to the Midwest Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, and even went so far as to record a 2007 Environmental Defense Fund ad calling on Congress to "deal with the real threat of climate change." The ad co-starred Janet Napolitano, then the Democratic governor of Arizona, who now serves as the Obama administration's Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
"If we act now, we can create thousands of jobs in clean energy industries before our overseas competitors beat us to it," Pawlenty said at the time.
As a presidential candidate, Pawlenty faced tough questions about his past support for cap and trade while on the campaign trail. Rather than standing his ground, Pawlenty played the role of apologist, calling cap and trade "ham-fisted" and describing his previous position as "stupid" and a "mistake". He also began to claim that the "science is in dispute" and attributed climate change to natural causes, rather than human emissions. Rather than bolster Pawlenty's conservative credentials, the move fed right into his opponents' efforts to portray him as a flip-flopping politicians willing to say anything to get elected.
Newt Gingrich has fallen a nearly identical trap in recent weeks. Unable to shake the image of himself seated on a couch next to Nancy Pelosi talking about global warming, Gingrich too has labeled himself a flip-flopper by describing this now famous ad as a "mistake" and "one of the dumbest things I've done in years." As for whether or not humans contribute to global warming, Gingrich now says, "I don't think we know."
Ron Paul was all too happy to highlight Newt's obvious flip-flop on climate change, making it the focus of an online attack ad dubbed "Serial Hypocrisy". The ad has received close to 1 million views on YouTube and Gingrich's rapid decline in the polls has been attributed in part to its success. Of course, Paul too has flip-flopped on the issue. In 2008, the Texas Congressman acknowledged that human activities probably do contribute to climate change. By 2009, he was calling it "one of biggest hoaxes of all history" and "terrorism". More recently, his presidential campaign has been content to use words like "as-yet scientifically proven" to describe anthropogenic global warming.
Now, one of the few Republican presidential candidates who still maintains that humans contribute to global climate change appears to reemerging as the inevitable winner of his party's nomination. Mitt Romney may be uncertain of the degree to which we are responsible for global warming, but at least he's consistent.
"I think the Earth is getting warmer," he recently told voters in Florida. "I may be wrong. Number two, I think we contribute to that. Number three, I don't know how much we contribute to that."
In 2004, Romney made similar comments in his preface to the 2004 Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, where he wrote about his administration's "no regrets" policy towards climate change:
"If climate change is happening, the actions we take now will help. If climate change is caused by human actions, this will really help. If we learn decades from now that climate change isn't happening, these actions will still help our economy, our quality of life and the quality our environment."
In sticking to his guns on global warming, Mitt Romney has managed to withstand the flip-flop attacks that have brought down lesser candidates. Sure, Romney was for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative before he was against it, a fact documented by the aforementioned climate action plan he signed as Governor.
"At the invitation of New York Governor George Pataki, Governor Romney has joined the initiative to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions through a CO2 cap and trade program, starting with the electrical power sector," it noted.
But Romney's success suggests that many GOP voters are fine with electing a President who believes that something can be done to solve the climate crisis without endangering the nation's economy. What they can't stand is a candidate who flip-flops on the issue for the sake of political convenience, a lesson Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich have learned all too well.
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