Climate change group targets Syracuse Republican in 2012 vote
Ann Marie Buerkle is being targeted by environmentalists because of her stance on climate change (Photo: Buerkle campaign)
The Washington Post is reporting that a group called the League of Conservation Voters will target five Republicans across the US who are “climate change deniers” in this year’s campaign.
One of their objectives is unseating a GOP House member from Syracuse, Ann Marie Buerkle, who is locked in a tight contest with Democrat Dan Maffei. This from the Post’s story:
During a televised campaign debate in 2010, Buerkle said that “a lot of the global warming myth has been exposed.” While she later explained that she was specifically referring to pirated e-mails from climate scientists, which came to light in an incident known as Climate-gate, she added that “the jury’s still out” on whether fossil fuel burning contributes to global warming.
The League of Conservation Voters says it will try to brand its political targets as the “Flat Earth Five.” The group only has about $1.5 million to spend, but in closely fought House races, those dollars could be significant.
According to the Post, Buerkle’s campaign manager, David Ray, declined to talk about the specifics of climate change science, but he said Buerkle rejects using the cap and trade policy pioneered in part by Republicans to reduce carbon pollution.
“What she doesn’t support is Dan Maffei and Nancy Pelosi’s cap-and-trade energy tax that would raise electricity rates by 40 percent without doing anything to help the environment.”
The Post says the group has announced that one of its other campaigns will be aimed at a GOP lawmaker in Michigan. The remaining three targets for spending haven’t yet been revealed.
Tags: climate change, election12, environment, politics
Right now gas companies do not want to tap into more gas. They want to keep prices high. It is a rare example of where gas company execs and environmentalists are in agreement.
Paul – Let me rephrase. No one is going to fund sequestration research to the level that would be needed.
But that is my uninformed opinion. I would love to be shown to be wrong. How much research money is available compared to say breast cancer research or ovarian cancer of PTSD. Or the effects of outer space radiation on astronauts?
When the US military and all of the insurance companies are convinced that climate change is real and they need to plan for higher temperatures, higher sea levels, and more destructive storms then the debate is over.
Anyone who doesn’t accept that global warming/climate change is real is just flat wrong.
The question now is how much should we do to try to mitigate the damage that has been increased while we argued about whether man-made climate change is real or not. We are going to pay, there is no doubt about that. It is already happening. Here is just one of thousands of stories you could find:
http://www.bayjournal.com/article/sea_level_along_chesapeake_rising_faster_than_efforts_to_mitigate_it
You can deny it all you want but climate change will cost you money.
Peter I think that sequestration could be (and maybe is) being funded because it can make companies money if it works.
Walker we don’t do well at that sort of thinking.
I realize that it might be too late, realistically though nothing is going to happen on a large scale until this has a major fiscal impact both to the government, individuals, and companies. Basically what knuckle said. I think insurance companies already are reacting, its why they won’t write flood insurance policies for many of these areas, but of course we then step in with our tax dollars to offer federal flood insurance, which only makes the problems worse.
What happened to our spirit of adventure? We have always tried to live on the edge, why not now? This just makes life even more exciting!
Don’t worry Mervel we will come up and visit you on the top of the hill once and a while.
Your right Paul, Insurance is for the WEAK!
Mervel, I was just trying to inject a little humor. I have lots of insurance.
Also, I hope the federal flood insurance doesn’t cost us money. I assume it is revenue neutral at worst?
Oh I was also Paul. The internet is tough to know if someone is laughing or not when they post something!
I actually thought that it might be in jest. I am the one who should lighten up.
You two should work this out on your own time.
Climate change is happening like it has many times before. Whether or not it’s somewhat or a lot caused by humans isn’t known. The tone if the religious believers turns people off. Plenty of other environmental issues require attention: ocean overfishing, invasive species, habitat conservation.
Josh, there’s nothing religious about it: “97–98% of the most published climate researchers say humans are causing global warming.”
So what if humans are causing it and have caused it.
From the research I have seen anything we do now will have no impact for 10-20 years on the climate and that would be if we make massive changes right now today.
Not going to happen.
I think we can make massive changes but it will take many decades to change how we use energy, and the US cannot solve this problem. Someone else is likely have to take the lead. If other countries are serious about this they should move forward with or without the US.
Once again we are not in charge of the world.
Competitively I would think we would want to get in front of this however as it is probably the future of energy.
You don’t need scientific evidence to conclude that humans have changed the climate system. All you have to do is think about it for a minute or two. Start by thinking about how much coal, oil, wood has been burned in the past 100 years in terms of volume and tonnage and it quickly becomes obvious to anyone with a brain that we have changed the atmosphere. Changing the atmosphere means that we have changed the climate.
That isn’t to say that we don’t need to deal with over fishing, invasive species, and habitat conservation too.
As far as time frames, if we started working on the problem 10 or 20 years ago we would be 10 or 20 years closer to a solution. A couple of decades goes by pretty quickly.
I agree.
I wonder though do we have the ability to really think that way and follow through? We have the ability to think long term and plan for it, our military does this all of the time. Evaluating threats 20-50 years out and planning weapon systems to meet those threats. The weapon systems we have today were designed in concept 20 years ago.
So we can do this, I just wonder if we have the will? Will some people benefit from global climate change? If you look at arctic shipping for example or arctic oil exploration; global warming would help those industries. The same goes for climate shifts, would certain countries and areas become more productive from an agricultural perspective?
Mervel, we pretty clearly lack the will politically at present.
And while there are bound to be some winners from climate change, remember, it’s not just warming– there’s the accompanying increase in storms, flooding, winds and desertification. I don’t think on balance it will be a wash.
Paul, you mention carbon sequestration pretty optimistically. Wikipedia’s article on the subject doesn’t sound so rosy: sequestration can reduce a power company’s output by 25%. And it looks like your ALCOA example has gone paws up Bloomberg: Co2 Solutions Puts CCS Project With Alcoa On Hold After Review. Any more promising links?
To me global climate change would be a huge national security and economic challenge to our country. We have addressed those sorts of challenges in the past.
So if you have a challenge that will lower our GDP significantly within the next 10 years, making everyone less well off it would seem there would be political will to start to address this issue.
At some level people in power either don’t really believe it or feel that the costs of making a real impact on climate change is greater than the benefits to them. Which is why I was wondering about who benefited from climate change.
Guilt tripping on the environment will NEVER work. What may work is to show corporations, the defense establishment, the energy industry, the high tech industry, the intelligence community and the 1% ers, how climate change is going to lower their profits and power, which it might. If this happens I think you can see real change and real large scale investment in making change with real outcomes, an actual plan. Just saying we should do this and it might help, will never fly.
“Guilt tripping on the environment will NEVER work.”
People have children, right? They want to amass huge fortunes to pass on to their children, but they don’t care what kind of world they’re going to leave their kids to face? I really don’t get it.
And sure, some firms will make money out of climate change, but the real money is in the status quo, if you’re an energy company. Bill McKibben points out that they have about five times more oil, coal, etc. in the ground than we can burn before global warming becomes irreversible. For the oil companies, it is very important that no one try to stop them from getting the other four-fifths of their reserves sold. That’s why you can be pretty sure that there will be “substantial doubt” about global warming for several decades to come.
“So if you have a challenge that will lower our GDP significantly within the next 10 years, making everyone less well off it would seem there would be political will to start to address this issue.”
CEOs don’t generally seem to look much beyond the next annual report, or maybe the point where their stock options vest. And it’s a rare politician that looks beyond the next election. Now if it became clear that voters were basing their votes on a long view, we might have a chance. But Citizen’s United ensures that there will be enough money to get the voters to think whatever big business wants them to think.
So I think its a safe bet that we’ll keep headed straight for those icebergs. (I guess that’s the wrong metaphor for a global warming discussion though.)
I think many corporations plan into the mid range future (5-10 Yr) relatively often. The products we are using now were first designed in concept often over five years ago. Think about how long it takes to plan and develop a new drug or a new airplane for example.
Many corporations do plan for longer time horizons.
Certainly the US government does. We plan decades ahead on many fronts.
If large corporations see that global climate change really will hurt their business model I think they will look at large scale solutions.
I think on children and passing on resources to them versus passing on a clean world; the issue is what can I really impact? From everything I have read when it comes to climate change, my individual decision to do some things to reduce carbon will have almost zero impact on making a difference toward global climate change. I think it is the right thing to do and we should do it because of that, but it won’t make a difference in the global scheme of things. The changes needed are at the global level, not the individual level. However I CAN make a difference in providing my children with the resources to survive what looks to be a troubled future.