Commentary

In the 1970s, energy security was an issue and President Carter pushed energy conservation but global warming was not on the radar screen. 

In 2000, it looked like global warming would be a big differentiator between then Governor Bush and VP Gore.

Mr. Gore, of course, was the anti-global warming candidate.  If elected, he said, he would regulate carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, as a way of slowing and stopping global warming.

But a curious thing happened.  Mr. Bush could have argued against CO2 regulation as a big government mistake and that the global warming fight is best left to the private sector.  Instead, he came out in support of CO2 regulation and as a result, global warming was not much of an issue.  There was not much to debate since both candidates were proposing the same solution.

After the election, Mr. Bush changed his mind and switched first to a let's study the issue further and then to let’s let the private sector lead the fight.  (By the way, is that a flip flop?  To use Senator Kerry’s phrasing with President Bush's positions, I was for CO2 regulation before I was against CO2 regulation.)

In 2004, the opportunity was there for global warming to take a larger role but there were other more pressing issues such as the Iraq War.  And I would guess that the candidates polling revealed that Americans were not pushing for CO2 reductions.

Will 2008 be different?  Hurricane Katrina, An Inconvenient Truth, greater scientific consensus, death producing heat waves and droughts, international UN reports have put Global Warming on the front pages of our newspapers and into our conversations.

In the Democratic Presidential primary race, the Democratic candidates are mostly debating how fast we should go in reducing our CO2. 

On the Republican side, of the leading three candidates (Governor Romney, Senator McCain and Mayor Giuliani) no one is trying to argue that we need more study or that global warming is a hoax.  The closest person to President Bush’s stance of let’s leave it to the private sector is Governor Romney.

For those of us who support clean energy, carbon dioxide reduction and other global warming initiatives, this looks like good news.