(Cross-posted on kos)
Among the names of potential Obama running mates popping up these days is one Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Hagel has deservedly received kudos for his courageous stand against Bush's war in Iraq - one of the most important issues of our time.
But on another of the major issues of our time - climate change - Sen. Hagel's position has been far from heroic. To the contrary, he is one of the main reasons why the U.S. today remains an obstacle rather than a leader on the issue. It's critically important for Democrats to understand Hagel's history on climate change before they consider positioning him one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Sen. Hagel's most influential act to obstruct action on climate change came in 1997, when he co-sponsored (with coal-friendly Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV)) the now-infamous Byrd-Hagel Resolution. This resolution was ostensibly timed to influence the Kyoto negotiations, which had not yet concluded; it was cleverly written to damn the treaty while also attracting support from all sides of the Senate.
The resolution said that the US should not be a signatory to a climate change treaty that excluded developing nations and could hurt the US economy. This motherhood-and-apple-pie language passed 95-0. It has since been used, with Hagel's encouragement, to justify the Bush administration's withdrawl from the Kyoto treaty and refusal to take any serious action on the issue since.
In fact, when Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto treaty in March 2001, Hagel told CNN that Bush had "brought some honesty" to the issue: "He has set aside the charade of Kyoto and he is saying we can do it in a better way, a more responsible way."
Around the same time, when Bush's first EPA Administrator, Christie Todd Whitman, proposed regulating carbon dioxide emissions, Hagel wrote a letter to the president asking for "clarification" of the administration position on this issue. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill wrote in his book, The Price of Loyalty that Hagel did so at the prompting of Dick Cheney. Whitman was subsequently slapped down for suggesting such a policy - even though Bush himself had proposed CO2 regulation during the 2000 campaign.
While Hagel tries to portray himself as a moderate on climate change, he has in the past spoken at conferences of those climate "skeptics" funded by Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries to sow confusion on the issue. And he has tried to make the science sound muddy with statements like "Scientists are still very unclear on what is happening and we just don't know enough about it."
Today, while Hagel has sponsored legislation to promote renewable energy and such, he remains a staunch opponent of any type of climate regulation. He takes basically the same approach as the Bush administration - use the magic of the marketplace, promote new technologies (with minimal funding, of course) and don't do anything the fossil fuel industries wouldn't want you to do.
In short, on climate change (as on other key issues, like abortion), Hagel would be little better than our current VP, Dick Cheney. Is this really what we want and need in a Democratic nominee?
Good post.