The Daily Climate: Has global warming transcended "green"?

by Emily Gertz

Published November 03, 2008 @ 09:39AM PT

The Global Language Monitor reports today that global warming is one of the top buzzwords of this election, second only to the financial crisis in the electorate's concerns:

The electorate appears to be more advanced in its thinking than either party (or platform).  Taken as a whole their concerns center upon uncontrollable, cataclysmic events such as the global financial meltdown and climate change (Nos. 1 and 2), while raising taxes (No. 22) or cutting taxes (No. 27) are lesser (though still important) concerns...

The second-most discussed term of the campaign barely surfaces in most media reports, and this is the combination of ‘Climate Change’ and/or ‘Global Warming’.

Typically in national elections, people vote their pocketbooks before they vote green. And when a White House hopeful talks about environmental issues, it is more of a signifier of where that candidate stands (or wants to convince voters she or he stands) on the left-center-right continuum of American politics, than an expression of his or her prioritizing of a healthy, sustainable environment.

So is the American electorate suddenly of one green mind? Not likely. More probable is that global warming has slipped its treehugger tethers and to become its own political issue, independent of other environmental policies and problems. An encouraging development, since effective action on global warming must go way beyond the boundaries of what are usually consider environmental laws and regulations, into the realms of policies on economic development, fiscal regulations, energy, labor, trade, national security, and more.

Another sign of global warming's transcendence: In last week's 30-minute Obama-mercial, the Democratic candidate for president mentioned action on global warming -- but no other erstwhile green issues -- along with his other top-level policy prescriptions. (33.55 million watched it on TV, according to The New York Times, and as I type, 1,680,668 have viewed it on YouTube) Perhaps the Obama/Biden campaign paid attention to the recent survey that found that two thirds of voters say global warming is a top concern; or, took note of how Nashville student and social worker Ingrid Jackson gained national attention when she brought global warming policy into prime time, broadcast television< with her presidential debate question.

In other news:

Fair weather friend of clean energy? T. Boone Pickens announces he'll delay the world's biggest wind farm project, due to the global credit crunch and falling natural gas prices. (Charlotte Observer)

New data confirm what Bill McKibben first wrote in 1989's The End of Nature: human-caused climate de-stabilization is warming every continent, including the coldest corners of the Earth. (The Guardian)

Quailing at the short-term expense of curbing carbon pollution, Italy, Poland, and other nations are trying to weaken the European Union's climate re-stabilization measures. If the EU loses credibility on fighting global warming, it will be that much harder to convince major carbon polluters like China and Russia -- currently not bound by the Kyoto Protocol's emissions-reductions targets -- to make major emissions cuts. (Reuters Alertnet)

Eco-activists are rallying the public to pressure the government of Canadian Premier Gordon Campbell, which has yet to implement key parts of the agreement to preserve British Columbia's old-growth Great Bear Rainforest. The government set a deadline of March 2009 for implementing the full conservation plan. Two years ago, the Canadian government announced the deal to conserve the massive coastal rainforest -- which, amid its other environmental virtues, sequesters from 500 to 1300 metric tons per hectare of carbon, and sinks another two metric tons per hecatre a year. (DeSmogBlog)