Tuesday, April 20
I haven't really heard of him, but David Brooks penned one of the best Op/Eds I've seen on the environment in some time. Why do I like it? I like it because it addresses a point I've been making for some time. Conservatives are frequently maligned as sell-outs when it comes to the environment. The mere mention of an environmental buzzword is enough it seems to paint their policies as flawed. It does this and still includes the more appropriate criticisms. Afterall this problem is not helped by Republicans who have done a terrible job of explaining their positions.
Included within that lousy sales job is what Brooks calls their biggest blunder. He calls the administration biggest failure their inability to restart the global warming debate. He accurately points out that the failure isn't their reaction to Kyoto, which was never going to work here anyway, but their apathy in it's aftermath. This should be the point hammered home by admin opponents. Not that we pulled out of Kyoto, but that we never got back in any discussions of any sort. It's valid, fair, important and needs to be brought up with vigor.
Anyway, we've talked about these policies in the past and you folks even agreed with some of the cap-and-trade systems more likely to be proposed by this Administration (specifically, the fishing grounds in Australia & New Zealand). Command-and-Control is expensive and doesn't incentivize the technological advances that will ultimately solve these problems. Cap & Trade does, and has the benfit of being more efficient to the benefit of all of us. But it's also easily labeled as "weakening protections" or "allowing companies to write our laws".
So it's easy for Kerry to score points by saying things like, "fighting to weaken protections on several fronts", "devastating deterioration not only in our economy but in our public health and safety", "contribute to up to 100,000 premature deaths from respiratory troubles and induce millions of asthma attacks", and never address why he favors command and control over an incentive based approach (if he even does?).
This is one issue that conservatives should be winning on. Their policy ideas are correct, but their message has been terrible, terrible, terrible. And they are led further into that abyss by an apparent unwillingness to talk coherently on the subject... Because they automatically lose on the environment whenever it's discussed.
Included within that lousy sales job is what Brooks calls their biggest blunder. He calls the administration biggest failure their inability to restart the global warming debate. He accurately points out that the failure isn't their reaction to Kyoto, which was never going to work here anyway, but their apathy in it's aftermath. This should be the point hammered home by admin opponents. Not that we pulled out of Kyoto, but that we never got back in any discussions of any sort. It's valid, fair, important and needs to be brought up with vigor.
Anyway, we've talked about these policies in the past and you folks even agreed with some of the cap-and-trade systems more likely to be proposed by this Administration (specifically, the fishing grounds in Australia & New Zealand). Command-and-Control is expensive and doesn't incentivize the technological advances that will ultimately solve these problems. Cap & Trade does, and has the benfit of being more efficient to the benefit of all of us. But it's also easily labeled as "weakening protections" or "allowing companies to write our laws".
So it's easy for Kerry to score points by saying things like, "fighting to weaken protections on several fronts", "devastating deterioration not only in our economy but in our public health and safety", "contribute to up to 100,000 premature deaths from respiratory troubles and induce millions of asthma attacks", and never address why he favors command and control over an incentive based approach (if he even does?).
This is one issue that conservatives should be winning on. Their policy ideas are correct, but their message has been terrible, terrible, terrible. And they are led further into that abyss by an apparent unwillingness to talk coherently on the subject... Because they automatically lose on the environment whenever it's discussed.
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