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Political Climate Change
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Location: Blogs The Green Zone an environmental blog |
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| Posted by: Dave Rhea |
3/13/2007 8:39 AM |
Political parties are experiencing a realignment of traditional members spurred by gravity of global climate change.
Reuters recently ran a story called “Climate is big issue for U.S. hunters, anglers,” which said that usually hard-line Republican hunters are starting to second guess their political affiliation because they are witnessing their hunting and fishing habitats feeling the strain of global climate change.
“President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney both hunt and fish. But both also have ties to the oil industry and they have been less than enthusiastic about embracing political measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions,” Reuters reported.
Quoting Jack Williams, a senior scientist with conservation group Trout Unlimited, Reuters reported:
“‘We are finding a lot of concern among anglers and hunters about climate change. These people value traditions and their family and it will affect their children and their ability to enjoy these kinds of outdoor experience,’ Williams said.”
Early snow melts beget less water in the summer and autumn. Trout like cold water and become stressed on hot summer days, because water levels are lower and temperatures are higher than would have been the case if the run-off came at more traditional times from April to June, the report said.
In addition, the report said: “‘We have a lot of support from duck hunters who know our work in protecting wetlands is vital,’ said Ben McNitt, communications director for the National Wildlife Federation.
Outdoorsmen were seen as instrumental in getting congressional protection from oil and gas drilling last year for two wild areas: the Valle Vidal in New Mexico and the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana.
‘Sportsmen played a critical role in convincing Congress to protect these areas,’ said Kira Finkler, legislative director for Trout Unlimited.
Groups like Trout Unlimited are now directing political attention to climate change issues and policy.”
The report reiterated, “A nationwide survey of licensed hunters and anglers last year commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation found that 76 percent of those polled agreed that global warming was occurring and the same percentage said they had observed climatic changes in the areas where they lived.
Eighty percent of the outdoors-types surveyed said they believed the United States should be a world leader in addressing global warming.
Half of those polled identified themselves as evangelical Christians - a key support base for the Republican Party, which has been divided on the issue of global warming.
‘If the priorities of evangelicals change from social issues like abortion to the environment, it could have a profound effect on the Republican Party,’ said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron.
It could make the Republicans embrace more environment issues or it could lose support to the Democrats, Green said.” |
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Re: Political Climate Change |
By dr on
3/18/2007 9:16 AM |
| Did the survey go as far as to ask what the outdoorsmen thought was the cause of global warming? Of course not. I would venture to say that if given the choice of global warming causes between a) man-made, or b) a cyclical event, they would resoundingly choose b). Instead of quoting snippets from Trout Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation, did anyone think to ask for each organization's policy statement on global warming? Of course not. Another typical one-sided "news" story that was rendered to fit the organization's agenda. |
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