Monday, April 17, 2006
Bush surrounded by changing political climate
With his wagons in a circle, President Bush is under seige from a disparate array of lobbyists, including Evangelicals and the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and DuPont, reports US News last week.
Bret Schulte reports that what is driving this push is "an emerging consensus on global warming, fed by a stream of recent scientific reports. If that consensus view is correct, the results could be devastating: rising oceans, ferocious hurricanes, and prolonged droughts."
Public concern has shot up markedly in the past two years, according to a poll released last month by the Opinion Research. Sen. Pete Domenici, the powerful chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, last week hosted a high-level forum of scientists, businesses, and public-interest groups to discuss how to curb emissions without busting the economy. 160 organizations, individuals, and businesses submitted proposals tranging from caps on emissions to a market for large polluters to buy credits. US NEws reports that passage of a bill is unlikely this year. Nevertheless... legislation curbing greenhouse gas emissions is starting to feel like a case of when, not if."
86 evangelical leaders signed on to a major initiative that accepted the reality of human-related global warming and called for federal legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The movement fell short of a full endorsement by the National Association of Evangelicals, but the group's chief lobbyist in Washington, the Rev. Richard Cizik, is one of the initiative's biggest boosters. The former skeptic was swayed at a three-day climate-change conference in 2002. "I had a conversion [that was] characteristic of my conversion to Christ," he says. The Bible calls us to be good stewards of the Earth, he believes, but the crusade is largely driven by the potential human toll from disasters. "The group has begun running ads on CNN and the Fox News Channel. It's even turning up the pressure on one of the religious right's staunchest supporters, Sen. Sam Brownback, by airing television ads in Kansas urging him to take a tougher stand on the issue," reports USNews.
Meanwhile, investors are agitating for change. A group of institutional investors called Ceres is deploying $3 trillion in assets to sway businesses to cut emissions and plan for a future in which climate change or federal laws could hurt profit margins. "Companies are also feeling the pain of operating in a patchwork quilt of state emissions standards that have sprung up in the absence of federal legislation," says the report. But companies like DuPont, which has already saved billions by making its plants more energy efficient, will welcome mandatory restrictions which would give them a competitive edge. British Petroleum is trumpeting its cuts in emissions while promoting its slate of alternative energy solutions. And many multinationals are facing emissions restrictions in Europe, where the Kyoto Protocol is already working.
Back home in the USA, the Republican Party is splitting on the issue. Prominent Republican Tucker Eskew, a former deputy communications director for President Bush, is supervising a joint campaign with the Ad Council and the group Environmental Defense to educate the public on the global warming threat. 53 senators passed a nonbinding sense of the Senate resolution last summer, stating that, at the very least, climate change is real and mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gases are needed.
Bret Schulte reports that what is driving this push is "an emerging consensus on global warming, fed by a stream of recent scientific reports. If that consensus view is correct, the results could be devastating: rising oceans, ferocious hurricanes, and prolonged droughts."
Public concern has shot up markedly in the past two years, according to a poll released last month by the Opinion Research. Sen. Pete Domenici, the powerful chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, last week hosted a high-level forum of scientists, businesses, and public-interest groups to discuss how to curb emissions without busting the economy. 160 organizations, individuals, and businesses submitted proposals tranging from caps on emissions to a market for large polluters to buy credits. US NEws reports that passage of a bill is unlikely this year. Nevertheless... legislation curbing greenhouse gas emissions is starting to feel like a case of when, not if."
86 evangelical leaders signed on to a major initiative that accepted the reality of human-related global warming and called for federal legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The movement fell short of a full endorsement by the National Association of Evangelicals, but the group's chief lobbyist in Washington, the Rev. Richard Cizik, is one of the initiative's biggest boosters. The former skeptic was swayed at a three-day climate-change conference in 2002. "I had a conversion [that was] characteristic of my conversion to Christ," he says. The Bible calls us to be good stewards of the Earth, he believes, but the crusade is largely driven by the potential human toll from disasters. "The group has begun running ads on CNN and the Fox News Channel. It's even turning up the pressure on one of the religious right's staunchest supporters, Sen. Sam Brownback, by airing television ads in Kansas urging him to take a tougher stand on the issue," reports USNews.
Meanwhile, investors are agitating for change. A group of institutional investors called Ceres is deploying $3 trillion in assets to sway businesses to cut emissions and plan for a future in which climate change or federal laws could hurt profit margins. "Companies are also feeling the pain of operating in a patchwork quilt of state emissions standards that have sprung up in the absence of federal legislation," says the report. But companies like DuPont, which has already saved billions by making its plants more energy efficient, will welcome mandatory restrictions which would give them a competitive edge. British Petroleum is trumpeting its cuts in emissions while promoting its slate of alternative energy solutions. And many multinationals are facing emissions restrictions in Europe, where the Kyoto Protocol is already working.
Back home in the USA, the Republican Party is splitting on the issue. Prominent Republican Tucker Eskew, a former deputy communications director for President Bush, is supervising a joint campaign with the Ad Council and the group Environmental Defense to educate the public on the global warming threat. 53 senators passed a nonbinding sense of the Senate resolution last summer, stating that, at the very least, climate change is real and mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gases are needed.
