Environmental issues and the race to the White House in 2008

Hello there bloggers this the administrator K-Dizzle, and you guessed it this is the big one, my final post and the main article on the environment that I have been working up to. Over the past few months I have been researching candidates views and interviewing experts in the environmental field. I was lucky enough to contact the Director of the Department of Ecology for Washington State Jay Manning, and the Commissioner of Public Lands and Manager of the Department of Natural Resources for Washington State Doug Sutherland. They were able to give me some in depth answers to my questions that really helped to put my article together. Now let’s move on to the issue of the environment in the 2008 presidential elections.

If you were to ask an average American citizen about the environment they would probably be all for protecting it, but they probably wouldn’t know any specifics. With others you might get the polarized persons who either believe that we as a nation should tear down are cities and live with nature, and those who believe we should harvest all the forests and pave them over. These people are called polarized for a reason, because they are at extreme ends of the spectrum. The average person is going to probably support some type of conservation. For years now Americans have been moving toward policies favoring protection of the environment. This has started to show in legislation. Here just in Washington Mr. Manning informed me of the “Clean Car” bill that was passed. It creates strict emission limits on car models starting in 2009. If we were to take a look at environmental disasters like the Exxon Valdez the public outrage is enormous. People don’t like to see travesties against nature, it isn’t pleasant to see our impact on the environment.

The current administration seems to be in stark contrast to the popular trend. The Bush administration has acted less in the interest of the environment than most previous administrations and has been focused on other issues since 9/11. This could definitely hurt the Republicans in the up coming elections, but only with people that really view this as an issue. Those who believe that the environment is a big issue tend to be Democrats, and those who don’t believe the environment to be a big issue tend to lean Republican. These people are set in their party and they aren’t going to change their vote because they already are aligned with a party, and not just on the environment. Who might change their vote however are Independents. They have already been major catalysts in deciding winners for state nominations as in Iowa. Barack Obama won the state thanks in major part to carrying a majority of independents. Now those independents who feel strongly about protecting the environment are going to look at what the Republican party has to offer and what the Democratic party is going to have to offer. The truth is that they will probably vote Democratic, not because Republicans are anti environmentalism, but because the aren’t addressing the issue all that much.

I took a look at the website’s of the leading candidates of each party. For the Democrats it was Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. For the Republicans, though hard to say who are the front runners at this time, I chose Mit Romney and Mike Huckabee. Between the two parties leading candidates I found a surprising difference. Both Clinton’s and Obama’s web sites went into in depth detail concerning many many different aspects of environmentalism, all of which could easily fill it’s own blog. However both Romney’s and Huckabee’s website, at least under their issues list, didn’t touch upon the environment at all. The only issue that I could find that remotely related to the environment was energy independence. In fact all candidates, to my knowledge, support our energy independence. This is where the environmental cause stands to gain a lot. Since the United States only contains about 1.7% of the worlds crude oil resources we as a country have to find new sources of energy, and most of them happen to be clean energy. There are so many promising energy sources such as biofuel, hydrogen power, wind power, solar power, and biomass power. Both Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Manning believe that one day new energy sources that are renewable will become our main sources of energy not fossil fuels, and even though they slightly disagree on different times for when the transition will happen it is inevitable that it will happen. Oil, coal, and gas are finite resources that will not last forever. Promising new sources of energy that will one day replace them are renewables that can last, theoretically, forever, which leave very little to no pollution. If we can transfer to these new renewables so much pollution will be taken out of the environment.

With all the pollutants taken out we can focus on cleaning the atmosphere, and easing global warming. No matter what you think global warming is a real phenomenon, a vast majority scientist acknowledge it to be real and even the current administration acknowledges it. There is debate wether it is a natural or man made phenomenon, but the main cause that scientists point to is probably green house gases being dumped into the atmosphere from human activities. Mr. Manning and Mr. Sutherland believe that global warming is a combination of human activities and natural events. Mr. Sutherland points out that cycles of warming and cooling are recurring cycles on Earth, but the warming that is occurring now is happening at unprecedented rates.

I bring up global warming to point out what the future has to hold. As pollution continues and we start to see more and more effects from it we are going to wonder why more wasn’t done sooner. The political party that acknowledges the problem first and tries to deal with it will in the long run get the bigger political boost, they can say way back when that they tried to deal with the problem while the other party did nothing. Right now the party of action seems to be the Democrats while the Republicans leave this issue on the back burners. Time will only tell.

There is a growing consensus that something needs to be done. Both my interviewees believe that we are going to need to change are ways. Mr. Sutherland points out that we not only need to rise to the challenge, but help other nations rise and take on this problem. I know that in 2008 the environment isn’t going to beat out more pressing issues such as the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq, or the economy, but it is an issue that must be confronted at some time. Let’s just hope that by the time we get to it, it won’t be to late.

K-Dizzle