19 arguments that differentiate the candidates
By Steve Kirsch
May 26, 2007
If you are undecided about who to vote for, the facts and arguments on this page have helped many people make up their mind.
This is a long web page. But the choice you make in the Primary is the most important choice for President that you will ever make in your life. So bear with me...
If you are already committed to a candidate, this page has caused people to re-think that commitment.
And if you believe that your decision "doesn't matter so long as we get a Democrat any Democrat" in office consider the following:
See Comparing the Candidates Summary Chart for the current numerical rating of the candidates based on leadership abilities and a summary of key strengths and weaknesses.
This is a really long web page. But this page is about your future and the future of your children and their children. Trust me...it's worth the 20 minutes it will take you to read it so you fully understand what is at stake. It may be one of the most important web pages you'll ever read.
Why should you trust me? Here's one reason. In the 2000 election, I published an analysis of George Bush who was running for President at the time. My analysis showed that Bush would be a complete disaster for the country because the evidence indicated very clearly that he ignores the facts, does whatever he wants, and then twists the facts to present a case that is exactly the opposite to what the facts show. That made him a very dangerous man. That's why I spent outrageous amounts of my own money (over $10M) to help Gore win. Sadly, not enough people believed me in 2000. Of course, a lot more people believe me now....7 years too late.
Today, I ask only that you read the material below in its entirety with an open mind.
Because of global warming, this election is totally unlike any other election in our history. We must choose wisely. If we pick a President who fails to cut our greenhouse gas emissions as fast and as deeply as we possibly can, or who fails to get other nations to start to follow our lead, then our people and our planet will suffer very dire irreversible consequences. See Global Warming urgency for details.
Scientists tell us that we must cut our emissions substantially by 2020 and then keep cutting until we've reduced emissions by 90% or more. The faster we do this, the better. If we do not do this, the problem becomes too big to solve because we pass a tipping point beyond which the oceans start emitting CO2. When that happens, climate is a runaway train; even if we drop our emissions to zero, we cannot stop it from growing. We cannot predict how hot it will get in that case. Eventually, things could get so bad that we may be unable to grow food anywhere on the planet. For example, this USA Today article points out that, among other bad things, that the entire continent of Australia will be unable to grow food at a 7.2 degree temperature rise. That may not be far away if we do not take action. Under one scenario in the IPCC report, temperatures could rise by 6.4 degrees Celsius by 2100 (see the A1FI scenario in Working Group I Summary For Policymakers Table SPM.3). And a report from our own National Academy of Sciences that just came out says this is now happening faster than the worst case IPCC predictions (i.e., worse than the A1FI scenario), i.e., it's much much worse than even the pessimists thought. And reality reflects this.
This fact is undeniable: this year, Australia may become the first continent that has to import food to survive. It only gets worse from there (although in some areas it gets better for a very small temperature increase, then it gets worse again after that). At some point (and they cannot predict when this will happen according to the IPCC report), all continents will be in the same position. The only trouble with that is when that happens, then where do we all import our food from? This question remains unanswered but if you know, please let me know!
If you think I'm exaggerating or that global warming isn't that serious or that we have more time, please see Global Warming: Why we need to cut dramatically by 2020 which explains the science, debunks the debunkers, and explains why we must take action now and why we must achieve dramatic cuts by 2020 and beyond rather than simply throw up our hands and say "we cannot solve this."
To avoid a global train wreck, we must start cutting dramatically by 2010 at the latest and we must achieve dramatic cuts (20% and preferably more) by 2020. So we must elect the a President in 2008 who has both the leadership skills and who clearly understands the urgency of the problem. And to do that we must elect the right candidate in the Primary. We cannot just elect any Democrat because of the frontrunners, currently only Edwards has clearly demonstrated that he has the leadership skills to solve this problem.
Global warming is critical. It is not "just another issue." It is the big gorilla. It is certainly the most important issue of our generation. It is likely the most important issue in the history of our planet.
In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an overwhelming majority said they favor "immediate action" to confront the global warming crisis (90% democrats, 80% of independents, 60% of Republicans).
In an April Center for American Progress poll, 60 percent of Americans supported bold action on global warming. A staggering 79 percent believe shifting to alternative energy sources will help the economy and create, not cost, jobs. Voters think the United States is falling behind other countries, and they want government to lead.
And the sooner government leads, the sooner we reap the economic benefits. This NRDC report projects that California's battle against global warming will increase jobs and improve California's economy. So it's senseless to wait, even if you don't believe in global warming at all or are skeptical that we can win the battle.
That is why I decided to start my analysis with this this issue. I also looked at Iraq which I view as a big distraction from the real problem (global warming). We should be spending at least 100 times more money fighting global warming than preventing an inevitable civil war in Iraq. But we are doing the opposite! Which is more important? Spending all our available funds and resources in delaying an inevitable civil war in Iraq? Or preventing our planet from an irreversible melt down? Hmmm....now that is tough choice. Future generations will look back on this time and wonder "what were they thinking?" We must end the war in Iraq and fix this resource allocation now or the terrorists will surely have won for they will have succeeded in distracting us from tackling the real enemy: global warming.
If all the candidates were equally good on these 2 critical issues, then I could look at the other issues.
Secondly, I believe that examining their differences on these 2 issues (going beyond the 1 minute sound bites you get in the debates or in TV commercials) can tell you a lot about how the candidate will perform on other issues important to the nation. The analysis below validates that; if they lead on one issue, they were highly likely to lead on other issues and vice-versa.
I spent a lot of time researching the candidates. I limited my analysis to the Democratic candidates because I want us out of Iraq now (which eliminates all the Republicans) and we need a candidate that takes global warming as a top priority (which again eliminates all the Republicans as you can see from this chart of Where the candidates stand that was put together by the League of Conservation voters.
Next, I limited my analysis to the top 3 Democratic candidates because the eventual winner is most likely one of them (but that can change). I've spoken with each of the top 3 candidates directly.
I started without a favorite. I like all 3 of the Democratic candidates and the only reason I started doing the research is because I knew I ultimately had to choose one, and I knew I had better choose wisely because the fate of our planet rests in our decisions more so in this election than in any other election in history.
If you had asked me to rate the candidates before I started doing this research, I would have rated Obama and Clinton at the top: Clinton because of her intelligence, experience and her ability to tap into the advice of President Clinton, and Obama because he has been extraordinary at inspiring people with his vision of the future attracting huge crowds when he speaks. Edwards seemed like a strong candidate too, but he didn't seem to have anything "special" I could point to. So I would have rated him #3. So my ranking mirrored the polls at the time.
But after I objectively analyzed the data, I was surprised to find that my initial impressions were wrong. Very wrong.
Although I started my research focused on how the candidates would fare if I examined them only on global warming, I came to the conclusion that ultimately this race came down to one word: leadership. We need leadership to get out of Iraq. We need leadership to solve global warming. We need leadership to solve our domestic issues such as health care.
The evidence I found was both clear and consistent. In general, I found that Edwards is not only the best candidate on Iraq and global warming but the best candidate all-around and arguably the one best positioned to win the White House. He is, by far, the best candidate of the top 3 on leadership skills. He demonstrated this on Iraq and on global warming. The other two top contenders have not. It wasn't even close. I was shocked when I looked at the record. I found that Clinton and Obama have, in general, refused to take strong positions on the top issues, they have been followers on the top issues, they have failed to speak out and express their opinions on some of the top issues facing our country, they have not asked others to follow them. Obama supports legislation which is opposite to the position he articulates on global warming. You'll see many clear examples of this summarized below. It is evidence that is hard to ignore.
Nothing made this more clear to me than observing how the candidates handled the Iraq war funding. The Iraq Funding Bill example was a very clear and compelling analysis of how Edwards took a position and communicated it (via newspaper, TV, and e-mail) and asked people to follow him while Clinton and Obama remained silent. This was the top issue for most Democrats and it was a perfect example of how Clinton and Obama not only failed to lead, but they also consciously refused to make their positions known to anyone in advance of the vote.
Several people who read that analysis said "I think that Edwards is a very important candidate yet I think it is easy for him to send out alerts and emails on the war because he does not need to vote." I disagree. What makes "needing to vote" an excuse for not disclosing where you stand on an issue until after the vote is over? It doesn't! In fact, Chris Dodd, who is in the exact same position as Clinton and Obama (a current Senator running for President), announced to the world that he would vote "No," yet his opponents Obama and Clinton remained silent. This AP article which came out on May 23, the day before the Iraq funding bill vote points out the contrast:
Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois, both leading presidential contenders, declined to say how they intended to vote on the measure. Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., also a presidential contender, said he would oppose it.
The exact same thing happened with the Reid-Feingold amendment to stop funding the war; Dodd not only announced his position, but he ran TV ads to get people to urge Congress to support this amendment. Within a few hours after those TV ads started running, both Obama and Clinton announced their position...before the vote. So don't tell me that "it's different when you are in the Senate." That's simply not true. Dodd and Edwards were the leaders in speaking out and asking others to join in the cause; it was likely it was their efforts that caused the other 2 Senators to join.
On other votes, Clinton and Obama came out before the vote and announced how they intended to vote. On May 14, two days before the vote on Senator Feingold’s proposal to cut of war funding, both candidates were both mum on how they would vote. Then, one day before the vote, they both declared their support for a March 31, 2008 cutoff in funds. So they can tell people how they are going to vote before the vote. They just chose not to in this important case. That's a leadership problem.
Howard Dean's former web guru, Joe Trippi, points out in an interview (Trippi blasts Clinton, Obama on war) that Edwards was the only candidate urging the American people to urge their Members of Congress to send Bush the same bill over and over again and that his actions stand in stark contrast with the inactions of Clinton and Obama. Trippi is biased since he is working on the Edwards campaign, but his statements are right and match what I independently found.
Although on January 30, 2007, Obama did introduce the 'Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007' which calls for a goal of all U.S. troops to leave Iraq by March 31, 2008, in a phased redeployment worked out with military commanders," Lynn Sweet reported January 31, 2007, in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Even more damaging is that Obama's bill is rather reminiscent of the June 21, 2006 Kerry-Feingold amendment which did substantially the same thing. That amendment was supported by 15 Senators (Edwards isn't listed since his Senate term had already ended), but not Clinton or Obama.
All the candidates are on their best behavior because they are trying to get our vote. We all know that once elected, Presidents always do worse than we thought (like how Bush went from saying we must regulate CO2 before he got elected to rescinding that in his first 60 days in office). So their inaction on the Iraq vote...that's probably as good as it is going to get.
Iraq is simple compared to global warming. The question you should ask yourself is:
If my candidate refused to speak out on Iraq before the vote, then why should I believe that he'll be the incredibly strong leader required to tackle the most difficult problem that our country has ever faced?
If you cannot answer that question, then perhaps you should re-think your decision.
Here's another interesting metric. Edwards sent 3 different emails in the March -April 2007 period with "global warming" in the subject line during this period. The others sent no emails at all regarding global warming. They didn't even mention it. Clinton and Obama signed onto the Sanders-Boxer bill in May. It's critical to our planet that this bill gets passed as soon as possible. It is called the "gold standard" of climate change bills. So why aren't they asking their supporters to call on their Senators to support this bill? That's what a strong leader would do; take a stand and enlist others to support it. Instead, they are silent on that critical bill. You cannot even find a press release from either candidate mentioning it. They never sent even an email to their supporters. They signed on silently and didn't tell anyone. No press stories even after they signed on. Sorry, but that is not the kind of bold leadership we need to solve this problem. I can guarantee it.
Edwards ended up being my top choice for the following reasons:
So why did she vote No? I talked to her energy staffer and learned
that she was persuaded by fellow Democrat Senator Levin that it is time to
re-think how the CAFE standards are calculated (the argument that it is
unfair to American companies due to the vehicle mix we sell) and allow for
leapfrog technology and help the auto companies achieve even bigger gains.
This is actually a pretty courageous move on her part since she had the
courage to vote her beliefs, independent of what her fellow Democrats were
doing. So if that's what she had in mind, and I have no reason to doubt it,
then her desire to say, "let's scrap this because we need to something more
fair and more aggressive" is very reasonable.
She gave
a speech
at the National Press Club on May 23, 2006, where she set a "concrete
goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil by at least 50 percent by
2025." She went on: "And how will we get there? Two words: innovation
and efficiency." It's a long speech; here is a
summary of the key points. There
are no greenhouse gas reduction goals. There should have been. These are the
most important to have. And the two ways to get there are close. The two
ways you get there are: efficiency and renewables as pointed out in the
ASES Climate Change report on
page 3.
On May 15, 2007, at an Obama event at the Plug-and-Play center in Silicon Valley, I asked Obama why it took him
almost 4 months to sign on to the Sanders-Boxer bill. He said it was because he was a co-sponsor of the (weaker)
McCain-Lieberman bill
(S.280) and that the Boxer bill was so tough that it wouldn't pass so his support would only be symbolic. Sorry, but that's definitely the wrong answer.
A real leader takes positions that are necessary for the safety of our country and then inspires others to follow. In this case, Boxer's bill isn't just a good bill; it is absolutely required if we are to have any chance at all to stop global warming.
Obama and Clinton should have jumped on this bill in January when it was introduced and spent their time helping Boxer convince other Senators to support it. That would be a real demonstration of leadership on the
most critical issue that this planet has ever faced. Instead, Clinton and Obama left the
real climate leadership to Boxer and Edwards. Edwards, who is not in the Senate
anymore, on March 16, became
the first
presidential candidate to publicly pledge to the target of reducing U.S. GHG
emissions by 80% by 2050, a goal which parallels Boxer's bill.
Obama's answer is also inconsistent with his actions. If Obama has a policy
of not signing on to bills that are only symbolic, then why did he sign on
as a co-sponsor of Sanders-Boxer on May 3? The bill did not change at all
since it was introduced. Obama signed on Thursday morning; Clinton signed on
a few hours later. I just wished he would have signed on at the start and
let his supporters know to tell their Senators to sign on to this. He still
hasn't done that.
Obama's CAFE bill
(S.3694) to increase mileage standards has good intentions, but Obama did
not accept any of the recommendations of the Sierra Club to fix the
bill. I suspect he did that because it would make the bill harder to
pass, not because the ideas they suggested were bad ones. It is much easier
to pass a bill that has lots of escape clauses than a bill with more teeth. As written,
the bill would only work under an administration
that is 100% devoted to climate change. But in the real world, it is
basically toothless since NHTSA has never raised fuel economy standards even
when they are supposed to. As Obama likes to point out, the Obama-Lugar bill certainly flips the initial
consideration at NHTSA from one where they start from a zero baseline and go
up from there to one that starts a 4% and then goes down. But what Obama
doesn't like to point out is that once NHTSA makes the determination to set standards weaker than the 4% target, it
starts from an assumption of 0% increase and sets the weaker standards based
upon technical feasibility and economic practicality - which is what NHTSA
does under current law, only now, the industry has more statutory hooks to
sue over. Given that NHTSA has been able to justify recent increases of less
than 1% improvements in light truck fuel economy as the maximum technically
feasible and economically practicable, there is no guarantee that the agency
would change how it operates. NHTSA's predilection for manipulating the
science, the economics, and the law is the basis for the
Sierra Club's current lawsuit in the 9th Circuit.
We are way behind China and Europe; those countries require cars get 45 mpg which is almost twice what cars in the US get. The UCS supports the bill but the Sierra Club's analysis of Obama's CAFE bill concluded it was nearly useless. They wrote: "it is likely that this bill will not do much to raise CAFE." There are way too many loopholes for them to choose not to act, which means nothing is likely to change from where we are today, i.e., zero progress. That is why it is easier to get co-sponsors whereas a bill with no loopholes like Feinstein's bill, is much harder to pass. We have the technology today to double our efficiency and make vehicles that cost less to manufacture and are safer (e.g., switching to hypercar materials), so why do we need the escape clauses in Obama's bill? Why aren't there any non-negotiable minimums to ensure some forward progress?
Here's what the New York Times said about the bill in an editorial January 30, 2007 (note the word "could be" rather than "is"):
But there’s a way Congress can get moving. Senator Barack Obama plans to reintroduce a bill that would set a 4 percent annual increase in efficiency as a target, just what Mr. Bush says he wants. The bill would also give both the Transportation Department and the manufacturers considerable flexibility. But the department could not deviate from the target unless it could demonstrate that the costs outweighed the benefits.Even that is too much wiggle room for lawmakers like Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Edward Markey. While allowing for administrative flexibility, they would require a firm fleetwide standard of 35 m.p.g. with no escape hatches. But given the long Congressional stalemate, the Obama bill could be an important first step. It commands some bipartisan support, and unlike Mr. Bush’s approach, it promises real as opposed to hypothetical results.
Obama's
low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) (S.1324) (modeled
after California's law) is a good bill. It forces companies to sell a
cleaner mix of fuels, i.e., make hydrogen, E85, and other fuels available.
In theory, the cap and trade (auctioning permits) should be sufficient to
achieve the desired result so this should be unnecessary. There are
basically two rules for good policy: the fewer the government rules, the
better and the rules should focus on endpoints (i.e., fewer milestones are
better) and not on specific paths. But if you are going to add a few more
rules, this is a good thing.
On the neutral side, there's Obama's
"Health for Hybrids" bill
(S.1151). I agree with the
reviewers who say this bill just combines two bad ideas (and summing two
negatives doesn't give a positive). For example, see:
So, Where's the Beef in Obama's Big New Ideas?: Kevin Hassett or
Obama’s
“Health Care for Hybrids” by Nicole Gelinas. In addition, the
Health for
Hybrids bill does not reward results; it rewards only investment.
Detroit is not forced to sell any additional hybrids. They are not even incentivized to sell more hybrids. Nor are they forced to
improved their average fuel economy by even 1 mile per gallon! It requires
only that the fuel economy cannot go down (see Sec. 102(c)(4)
of the bill)! Give
me a break... we're going to give you all this money and you are going to
guarantee that it won't get worse!?!? This is leadership? This is going to
get us cleaner cars by requiring things not get worse!?! At least it doesn't
make things worse, and it could make things better. But holding the
companies accountable for results that we can see would be much better.
That's why it is a neutral rating.
I think there are much better ways that government can spend
money. Government should reward results, not reward R&D investment. How about
giving a big reward for the first US car maker to achieve an average fuel economy
for passenger vehicles of 100 miles per gallon equivalent of CO2 instead?
That's possible to achieve pretty quickly. The prize for 2nd place would be
smaller. The prize for 3rd place would be even smaller. Then you'd have the
big 3 tripping all over themselves to outdo their competitors. Who would oppose that
bill? If the car makers can't do it (like they claim), it costs the
government nothing.
And on the really bad side, in January 2007, Obama
re-introduced his "coal to liquids" bill
(S.155) which actually makes the GHG problem
twice as bad (or
at best 4% worse than gas if
all the CO2 were sequestered which Obama's bill rewards, but does not require). Read this posting at gristmill entitled
Barack Obama is not serious about global warming which examines Obama's bill
pointing out that the bill doesn't require greenhouse gases be reduced; it
only provides incentives to employ technology that is still unproven (carbon
capture and storage). All the experts I talked with are all vehemently opposed to
coal to liquids (CTL) because it is costly, twice the GHG emissions as the
fuel it replaces as you can
see from this news story
from the New York Times on coal to liquids. Here is a wonderful
editorial from
the New York Times that argues that coal to liquids is just an incredibly
stupid idea since much better alternatives are available. Even worse,
Obama is the co-chair of the Senate Coal to Liquid Caucus! My favorite
though is the urgent email MoveOn.org
sent to its members entitled "Turning every Prius into a Hummer" calling the coal to liquids legislation that Obama
is championing "the greatest single threat to solving the climate crisis
in a decade." How can you top that?
On June 2, 2007, I asked
Obama about this and he said his bill requires sequestration and that coal
is our most abundant resource so you can't eliminate coal out from the
equation. But this is wrong on several accounts.
First, his bill only incentivizes sequestration of the emissions; it does
not require it. This has been pointed out by many people. You can even read
the bill: S.155
in Sec. 204(a). It is an extra tax credit if you sequester; it is not
required.
Ironically, he said it in California.
California already done exactly that! It's
now illegal in California to buy power from a coal plant and our
economy is growing! And it is VERY possible to totally eliminate
coal in every other state as well. It just requires vision and the
right leader. Even more ironically, it took a Republican governor
for this to happen!
He's still on coal because it is abundant. That's stupid. It's
the wrong criteria. LCV has declared "war on coal." There are plenty
of clean technologies which are cost effective and which wean us off
of dependence on oil and reduce global warming at the same time.
Those are the things he should incentivize. Biomass to liquids is
much cleaner than coal to liquids (and using wood as a BTL source is
actually negative GHG emission, i.e., it absorbs CO2). Other
alternatives include better vehicle efficiency (the cheapest of all
options), Fuel efficient aftermarket tires (this alone can ramp up
savings faster than CTL), low-carbon electricity to power plug-in hybrids,
cellulosic ethanol, and hydrogen as a fuel (which can be burned cleanly in
both existing internal combustion engines as well as fuel cells).
Technically, he's misinformed in his belief that coal is our
most abundant energy resource. It isn't. Some estimates are that the
Earth has
50,000 times more geothermal energy than all the known oil and gas
reserves known today. And
with the minmal government investments, it is very economical and
clean according to a new MIT study. This wikipedia article on
Geothermal
power notes that geothermal can supply the entire world's energy
needs for the next 30,000 years! By contrast,
we have only 300 years
of coal left. So Obama is ignoring a 100% clean resource that is
more than 100 times bigger than coal and costs less (when you factor
in the "cost" of pollution caused by the CO2 emissions of coal).
Abundance should NOT be the criteria on which to select a fuel.
We must factor in the true cost of CO2 and look for options which
are the most efficient and which will meet our GHG goal.
Obama still doesn't get the "and" clause and he doesn't
talk about it at all. To him, it is OK if we
incentivize a fuel that increases GHG emissions (even if you
sequester all the CO2 it is still worse than diesel!) if we are
making cuts elsewhere. But you simply can't get there from here. To get the
80% GHG reduction that Obama supports (the goal in Sanders-Boxer
bill that Obama supports), we must focus our efforts on replacing every fuel we have with
a GHG-free fuel. I don't know why he doesn't get that. Take a look
at the chart at the
end of this New York Times article showing that coal to liquids is a
step backwards, even if you sequester all the CO2! We will
never reach our GHG reduction goals with a President who spends time
championing fuels which are far worse than the fuels we currently
use. Never. Nor will anyone follow us. We have to "walk the
talk." We have to look at all our options and incentivize the energy
sources which get the job done at the lowest price, not sources
which are simply abundant. See this
Washington Post article which makes the same point. That is why
Obama gets a 4. Until he "gets it" that the solutions must be
sufficient to meet the goals he sets, our planet is hosed. I'm not
the first to point this out that he isn't "walking the talk." This
blog figured it out in January 6, right after he re-introduced his
coal to liquids bill, giving nearly identical commentary to what
I wrote when I found out about Obama's coal to liquid legislation.
Finally, according to a Clean Air Watch blog (which is a public interest blog
focused on clean air and not on supporting any particular candidate), "One of DC’s little secrets is that
environmentalists breathed a big sigh of relief when Obama recently left the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee."
However, this is an unfair comment. I checked with the head of one well
known environmental group and he said he felt that environmental groups were
"mostly neutral" about Obama's departure. I believe that because (1) I heard
it directly and (2) it is consistent with Obama's legislative track record
and leadership on this issue.
The question for you is whether you think that
someone that the environmental groups are "mostly neutral" about
and who is also the champion of the greatest single threat to solving the
climate crisis in a decade is the best guy to lead this nation in solving the most critical environmental
problem that this country has ever experienced. It's hard to get very
excited about that prospect.
On the positive side, Obama does have a 100% LCV record. That is far
better than Edwards (who got a low score because he missed votes due to his
campaign) and slightly better than Clinton. Also, the Sierra Club
and LCV have endorsed him. And in 2004, he
brought
the enviros to their knees with a speech at an LCV rally. Plus, he has a long
history of environmental activism.
All of that is great background. But continuing to champion coal to
liquids even after all the environmentalists are telling him it is a mistake
while at the same time saying we must tackle global warming shows incredibly
poor judgment on the most pressing issue our world has ever faced. This
disqualifies him for me and if you read my
writeup on just how
urgently we need to tackle global warming, it should disqualify him for
you too.
There is only one way we are going to beat climate change. We need someone like Edwards who is out in front of the climate change train, not someone who is going to be run over by it.
I haven't seen someone as a national figure do as much on workers' rights and poverty in my lifetime. That includes Bobby Kennedy and people in politics in the `60s. He helped organize people in probably 85 different actions, from hotel workers to university janitors to people who work in buildings and factories. He was out there demonstrating, marching, picketing, writing letters to CEOs, demanding that [workers] have the right to organize and represent themselves. He started a center on poverty and became the director at the University of North Carolina. He traveled the country and was a leader in getting a minimum-wage bill passed in eight states.
A high-profile Democratic donor told me, "We've known him since the 2004
campaign. He has more integrity than any other candidate we've known...and
we've met a lot of them [I can vouch for that!]. With Edwards, what you see
is what you get. He's not going to be swayed by political consultants
telling him what he should do to get the most votes."
Unlike Edwards, Senator Clinton
steadfastly refuses to admit that her original Iraq vote was a mistake. She can't
admit the truth. That makes it very hard for me to trust what she says. Take
a look at this video where
Edwards pointed that out
very clearly and eloquently in the first debate, America needs someone they can trust.
But Edwards missed a more important point. Failing to admit you made a
mistake is a trait that President Bush has too. That is why we are still in
Iraq... because Bush refuses to admit that his post-war strategy isn't
working.
Clinton has exactly the same problem as Bush; she must look perfect and she
cannot admit she made a mistake. So if she makes a mistake and picks the
wrong strategy to mitigate climate change , and that strategy turns out to
make the problem worse, I predict that she will not be able to correct it
because if she did, she will be admitting she made a mistake. This is very
likely to happen since there are lots of paths in energy that seem "good"
but actually make the problem worse such as many biofuels (as Monbiot points
out in "Heat., but other scientists tell me the same thing).
Charles
Peters, in the May 2007 issue of Washington Monthly (of which he is
the founding editor) got it right when he wrote, "Hillary's one weakness is
a dismaying one for a president. It is a desire to appear perfect that
cannot allow her to admit a mistake. This trait of Hillary's is why I'm so
uncomfortable with her candidacy for president."
Kos on Clinton after the June 3 debate said the same thing I have been saying:
Hillary Clinton: "I trusted Bush on Iraq." That, alone, should be enough to disqualify her. "Good judgment" is a must-have trait for our next president.
I don't know why she just can't say about her war authorization vote: "I regret that vote. It was a mistake." Edwards did so and it hasn't hurt him. In fact, given our current president's inability to admit a mistake, being honest about the biggest whiffs is kind of refreshing. But Hillary is learning the worst lessons from Bush. And thus, rather than admit she screwed up, she's reduced to arguing that she placed all her trust on Bush.
In my book, saying "I made a mistake" will always trump "I trusted Bush."
Because those of us who were watching closely, in 2003, knew damn well that Bush couldn't be trusted on anything.
Senator Gravel also pointed the same thing out about Clinton in this Huffington Post opinion piece.
But perhaps the single most significant impact of Clinton's perfection problem is that it also causes her not to take the bold stand that this country needs in order to muster the sense of urgency required to solve the problem. If you are afraid of being wrong, you will never be bold. She is cautious. This Washington Post opinion piece points out that "in Clinton's case, she is dead center in American public opinion, foursquare for what's popular and courageously opposed to what's not.
Even though all our best climate scientists tell us that
it is urgent that we cut greenhouse gasses dramatically as fast as we can, I
don't believe she can convey the same sense of urgency
to the public because they might be wrong and she afraid of being labeled an "alarmist"
In short, she isn't going to tell us the truth about how bad it is until
it is perfectly safe to do so. And with self-proclaimed "energy experts" such as
novelist
Michael Crichton,
Senator Inhofe's extensive media guide to global warming, and others
stirring the fear, uncertainty and doubt pot (even though
all their arguments
don't hold up under scruntiny), that will never happen. If
we have a leader who fears telling us the truth because she might be wrong, we aren't going to have the political will to be
able to solve the problem.
This isn't just my theory. This is true for her stance on global warming.
She realizes it is important, yet she refuses to take the strong stand
required to solve the problem. Environmentalists I know who have discussed
this issue face-to-face with her find her stance disheartening. It's likely only
going to get worse from here if she is elected.
Edwards, on the other hand, is not going to be shy about being straight with
the American people. I can imagine his message will be something like this:
"there is high agreement among
our best scientists that we need to be cutting our greenhouse gas emissions
as quickly and as deeply as we can in order to avoid severe consequences
that our best economists believe are likely to cost us more to repair than
to prevent from happening in the first place. Therefore, the most
responsible course for the country is to follow their advice, rather than
ignore it. It would be the equivalent of going to 100 doctors, where 99 say
you have cancer and will die without aggressive treatment and the other
doctor says he's not sure what is causing your problems. What do you do?
Seek aggressive treatment now or ignore the problem until all 100 doctors
agree?"
Obama voted against the war so he's fine with me on Iraq. Good judgment on Obama's part since we never had evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the US was in danger. That
(the "criminal standard of proof") should be the standard for going to war.
But will Obama admit that his championing of coal-to-liquids is a mistake
since it contributes to global warming at twice the rate of existing fuels?
Will he admit that he failed to speak out before the "Iraq blank check
funding" bill vote? So far he has not.
I worked for several days crafting energy-climate things for Kerry, who has been a pretty close friend of mine for a long time. Whether drinking beer in private or shouting into a microphone, he clearly gets it. His staff seemed to get it. But if you look at the actual focus-grouped-and-expert-reviewed lowest-common-denominator statements finally issued by the campaign, I doubt you can find five words of mine still strung together in the same order I wrote them. The campaign stuff was all embarrassingly "political" in the worst sense of that word -- a little something for everyone.
Turns out that the same thing could be said about Gore in 2000.
Here are just a few of the points of Clinton's speech:
She has a lot of good ideas in that speech. But what is most disturbing that she is missing the big picture. Based on her speech, you'd conclude that she sees global warming as a stewardship and a values issue. If I were giving that speech, I'd have a far different set of top 3 priorities. My top 3 priorities: global warming, global warming, and global warming. Saying anything else just isn't honest or accurate. Energy independence is important, but you get that "for free" if you focus doing the things you'd do for global warming.
If you look at her website (June 8, 2007), what you find is:
Hillary recognizes that global climate change is one of the most pressing moral issues of our time. She supports policies to reduce carbon emissions and other pollution that contribute to global warming.
Again, she positions global warming as a moral issue. But global warming is way beyond being a moral issue. Lack of water is not a moral issue. Hurricanes are not a moral issue. Flooding isn't a moral issue. Whole continents unable to grow food anymore isn't a moral issue. Insurance companies refusing to write policies in Florida anymore isn't a moral issue. People dying of starvation isn't a moral issue. The list goes on and on. See Global Warming: Why we can't wait and see if you agree with her assessment after reading it.
Secondly, her focus on reducing our dependence on foreign oil is completely misplaced. That is like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Her focus should have been on setting a concrete goal for GHG reductions, not energy independence. But there is no GHG reduction goal to be found anywhere in that speech.
It's possible she did that for political reasons. I've talked to a lot of voters and they care more about energy independence than global warming because the former seems to more directly affect them (the price of gas).
So even if she had the superb leadership skills to lead our country and the world to follow her, if her judgment is so poor that she picks the wrong thing to focus on, we're toast, i.e., if her focus is on energy independence rather than greenhouse gasses, then she will have won the battle (energy independence) but lost the war (planet burns up). This is not a good outcome. Had she instead focused on global warming, she would find that "energy independence" is achieved along the way as a fringe benefit.
From a source who knows her well, I learned that Clinton does not think like a leader; she is still stuck in "Senator mode" evaluating policy decisions based on whether it could pass rather than in the context of a new leader who sets the agenda based on what is best for the country and then figures out how to get others to march behind her. I saw some evidence of this first hand myself. I asked her about her Iraq "blank check" vote...why she waited to vote. She said she didn't want to create a media frenzy. That's a fine answer if you are a Senator; but if you are a leader, you'd relish the media frenzy since it creates an opportunity to get your message out.
She is not
yet willing to be bold on global warming at this point and hasn't put the
elements of an aggressive plan together in one place. She knows climate
change is "important" but she still does not "get" how urgent it really is.
When she talked about climate change on May 31, 2007, she used words like
"it must be done" and "fast track." Just 1 hour earlier, Edwards talked
about climate change on an LCV call and used the words "crisis" and
"immediate action." Richardson says "act boldly and act now." Subtle
differences in phrasing, but
you can see from the words that Edwards and Richardson really get the sense
of urgency of climate change and Clinton isn't there yet. So the subtle
language choices I observed is consistent with observations of others who
had 1-on-1 time with her.
One thing I know for
sure: if you are not willing to be bold with a capital B-O-L- and D, then
you will fail with a capital F-A-I-L. On May 31, I asked her directly about
this and she says yes, she wants to be bold about climate change. That's
good, but I want to see it reflected in her speeches and policy. I'll help
her do that and I'll let you know how it goes.
In contrast,
Edwards has it all on his issue page on energy; he has specific
GHG reduction goals with dates, and he has specific ways to achieve them. His page is full of substantive proposals and exhibits a clear understanding of the issues.
Privately, he tells people he wants to be bold; just the opposite of Clinton
and exactly what you'd want to see.
Obama's issue page on energy has no mention of an
overall 2020 or 2050 GHG reduction goal. How can he lead the country if he can't
even articulate the specific goal he wants us to achieve on the most
important issue of our time? He can't just say "jump." He has to specify "how high" and "by when."
How else can you evaluate whether his policies will achieve the goal? He leads off with a proposal
to reduce carbon from fuels that he says "would reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by about 180 million metric tons in 2020."
First, that is just one segment of the problem. Where's the overall GHG goal? And the numbers
he uses sounds impressive if you don't know the numbers. That would be a 3% reduction in our total GHG emissions
in 13 years from now if our GHG emissions were otherwise flat, i.e., no net increase in the number of vehicles over the next 13 years. That is just not good enough. It doesn't move the needle
down at all. His page is a perfect example of the kind of incremental, inside-the-box thinking that will get us nowhere close to where we need to be to tackle climate change. We need someone with a vision of a future where both transportation and electric power are virtually GHG-free and the courage to lay out
a long term integrated strategy to get us there rather than a hodgepodge of
programs that provide little to no benefit and, in some cases, make the
problem worse.
No candidate will be perfect. Keep in mind when evaluating your choice how important that factor is in your candidate's ability to solve the big issues facing our country today.
Still not convinced? OK, well John has talked about 2 Americas when he speaks to people. He's referring to the special interests vs. the public interest. I have a completely different version... I call it "The Big Choice"
You have a choice of two homes:
Which one do you choose? You get to answer that question in the Democratic Primary. It must be your final answer. It is "The Big Choice" because if you choose the wrong candidate, you're locked into the Hot House, and you lock the rest of the world into the Hot House, and there is no known way out.
Note that I assumed you might be able to extricate yourself from the Hot House in only 1,000 years. I chose 1,000 arbitrarily. The reality is that nobody has any clue what happens when we pass the tipping point. It's completely uncharted territory. 1,000 years might be wildly optimistic. Or it might be pessimistic. Nobody knows.
So the real question to ask yourself is this: "Are you feeling lucky?" Or from a more pragmatic point of view, you should ask, "why would we even want to risk picking the Hot House?"
I think candidates should ask Americans to make "The Big Choice" every time
they speak. Americans deserve to be told the truth and the deserve the
opportunity to make a clear choice as to which path they want to take. If they
overwhelming choose the Green House, then that provides the overwhelming public
mandate that our next President will need to get the job done. And picking the
Green House provides an enormous number of benefits including energy
independence, improving our balance of trade, reducing pollution, improving our
economy, creating new jobs, and saving people money. Cars will get over 100
miles per gallon and be safer and cheaper. See my
letter to Senator Obama for a
more complete list of benefits to going green.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to verify the level of worldwide cuts
required to avoid the Hot House is well in excess of 60% worldwide. Humans dump
over 7 GtC (Gigatons of carbon) into the air each year and the oceans and vegetation soak up only 3 GtC combined
(and it
will be even lower in the future as CO2 increases). So even if every country on the entire planet were to magically cut its GHG emissions by 60% tomorrow (think of how impossible that would be!), CO2 would then stabilize (since source = sink so the CO2 concentration doesn't get any worse). But it takes the oceans
about 500 years to almost fully heat up based on a given CO2 level. So even
if we cut our emissions 60% worldwide tomorrow, the average temperatures will rise every single year for the next
500 years as the oceans warm up to the CO2 concentration that we stabilized
at when we made the cut. So you should think about these days as the best days
of your life. Because they surely are. Unless we are wildly successful, it is
going to get hotter and hotter and hotter and there will be no way to turn down
that thermostat.
Unfortunately, there is no scenario where we can cut by 60% worldwide tomorrow. We can't seem to must the political will to cut much at all at the federal level (although some states have made progress). Other countries such as China and India are far worse than we are in terms of any progress to make any changes. So that is why we must cut by more than our "fair share" as soon as we can; because it will take years for the others to follow. If we don't cut now, then even if we later figure out how to do it, we'll be too late since even if everyone on the planet cut by 100%, the ecosystems would then be net CO2 emitters as I described in Global Warming: Why we need to cut dramatically by 2020 and we'd still be in deep deep trouble.
3 easy things you can do to stop global warming
Find an error? Please let me know and I will correct it. If you'd like to write a rebuttal or have a suggestion, please send it to me. My objective is to help people make the right decision in this most important election. We are all in this together.
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Steve Kirsch is a philanthropist and entrepreneur based in San Jose, CA. He is
CEO of Abaca, an anti-spam company. He has donated millions of dollars to environmental and world safety issues.
In the 2000 election cycle, he published an
analysis of George Bush which analyzed the evidence from his performance as
Governor of Texas and correctly predicted that Bush would be a disaster as
President since he had a track record of twisting the facts to support his
misguided beliefs.
Email: stk@ propel.com.
Phone: 650-279-1008
