Climate change in the backseat of US election coverage

Health care, the economy, immigration, national security…certainly all extremely important issues that must be discussed and debated during an election year, and have dominated the recent political dialogue in the United States. Climate change, and the environment in general, however, have been discussed only around the edges in the context of the current American presidential race.

I was just back in the United States for several weeks, and had the opportunity to closely follow the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, as well as the Democratic and Republican debate between. When mentioned at all, global warming was usually given a back seat to energy security (i.e. dependency on foreign supplies).

After all the media coverage of climate change in 2007, culminating in Al Gore’s Nobel Prize, I was expecting it to be one of the more important election issues of 2008. Apparently not. Now, each candidate at least has a position on the issue (for example, Obama favors cap-and-trade over carbon taxes); however, the television media outlets that I turned to during my visit (primarily MSNBC, which is usually considered fairly balanced politically), showed scant interest in reporting where the candidates stood, and how their proposed policies differed from one another. During the January 5th debate on ABC, little time was devoted to discussing climate change, with only Obama and Richardson having the opportunity to present their position, and no time for the Democratic candidates to challenge each other’s proposed solutions. I can’t remember hearing the Kyoto Protocol, or its successor that was the subject of the recent international conference in Bali, mentioned at all.

This apparent lack of interest stands in stark contrast to the recent election in Australia, where climate change was treated as a top-tier issue and some say was partially responsible for the downfall of the John Howard government, widely considered a climate change pariah. True, Australia has been in the grips of a severe drought that has been described as the developed world’s first climate crisis. But the US too is currently being afflicted by a historic drought in the southeast, and water shortages are certainly an issue for the western states. Not to mention the risks associated with hurricanes, such as Katrina, the frequency and intensity of which some scientists speculate may be linked to climate change.

Whether this paltry coverage truly reflects a lack of public interest, or the candidates’ political strategy, or if the media and pollsters finds climate change a less attractive topic, is an open question that will be interesting to consider while following what nonetheless promises to be a fascinating year in American politics that will certainly have global consequences.

/Eric