Pirate's Cove

Say, I wonder what the carbon footprint is for a presidential campaign? Hillary’s aides said her campaign will be carbon neutral. Not by actually doing anything, of course. They’re going to have carbon offsets. They just won’t say how. Anyway, the Dem debate featured a whopping 22 mentions of “climate”, per the Washington Post transcript. The five candidates are Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee. I’m not going to excerpt all 22, as some are little meaningless blurbs, and some come from Anderson Cooper (who took a fossil fueled flight to Vegas, and, hey, how much energy did this debate use?). Bold indicates the start of a new yammering, red is my brief comments

Chafee: I want to address climate change, a real threat to our planet.

O’Malley: And, we must square our shoulders to the great challenge of climate change and make this threat our opportunity. The future is what we make of it. We are all in this together. And, the question in this election is whether you and I still have the ability to give our kids a better future. I believe we do, that is why I am running for president, and I need your help.

Sanders: Today, the scientific community is virtually unanimous: climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and we have a moral responsibility to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and leave this planet a habitable planet for our children and our grandchildren. (then why all the use of fossil fuels, Bernie?)

Clinton: I’ve traveled across our country over the last months listening and learning, and I’ve put forward specific plans about how we’re going to create more good-paying jobs: by investing in infrastructure and clean energy, by making it possible once again to invest in science and research, and taking the opportunity posed by climate change to grow our economy. (huh. That’s quite a bit of fossil fuels, Hils!)

SANDERS: The scientific community is telling us that if we do not address the global crisis of climate change, transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to sustainable energy, the planet that we’re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may well not be habitable. That is a major crisis. (Doooooom!)

Then we get to the portion where they are asked what they would do about the doom by a “young person” (again, I won’t excerpt it all)

O’Malley: We can get there as a nation, but it’s going to require presidential leadership. And as president, I intend to sign as my very first order in office the — an order that moves us as a nation and dedicates our resources to solving this problem and moving us to a 100 percent clean electric grid by 2050. (oh, good, more Big Government wasting taxpayer money for a pipe dream)

Jim Webb gave a somewhat less than insane response, and said he’s a big proponent of nuclear power. Which will surely tick the hardcore Warmists off.

SANDERS: Well, I will tell you this. I believe — and Pope Francis made this point. This is a moral issue. The scientists are telling us that we need to move extremely boldly. (but not moral enough to change your own life to being carbon neutral, eh? Do you also support the Pope’s position on abortion, Bernie?)

I am proud that, along with Senator Barbara Boxer, a few years ago, we introduced the first piece of climate change legislation which called for a tax on carbon. (surprise! A tax)

And let me also tell you that nothing is gonna happen unless we are prepared to deal with campaign finance reform, because the fossil fuel industry is funding the Republican Party, which denies the reality of climate change… (in other words, change things to starve the other party. Rather fascist)

The planet — the future of the planet is at stake. (red meat thrown to idiots who vote D)

CLINTON: Well, that — that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. When we met in Copenhagen in 2009 and, literally, President Obama and I were hunting for the Chinese, going throughout this huge convention center, because we knew we had to get them to agree to something. Because there will be no effective efforts against climate change unless China and India join with the rest of the world.

They told us they’d left for the airport; we found out they were having a secret meeting. We marched up, we broke in, we said, “We’ve been looking all over for you. Let’s sit down and talk about what we need to do.” And we did come up with the first international agreement that China has signed.

Thanks to President Obama’s leadership, it’s now gone much further. (yeah, the Chinese promise to Do Something in 2030. Iran promised to not fire long range missiles, and they’ve already broken that promise. BTW, isn’t Copenhagen considered a complete failure, thanks to Obama?).

And, that’s about it. The Huffington Post grades the candidates, and finds

Clinton: B-
Sanders: B+
O’Malley: A
Webb: C-
Chaffee: B
The Media: D-

Of course, they were long on yammering, short on plans. Then they jumped into their fossil fueled vehicles for trips to their fossil fueled airplanes.