Learn your Congressional Candidates' Views on Global Warming and Energy Issues

The next president will be responsible for shaping our nation's energy policy and response to global warming, a job that the outgoing president left in the hands of the oil and coal industries. But the hard work of converting the next president's policy vision into political reality lies largely in the hands of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 100 members of the U.S. Senate.

Previously, it's been difficult for voters to learn where candidates for Congress stand on the most important environmental issues facing our country. So the NRDC Action Fund developed a new website, CandidAnswers.org, designed to let you ask your own candidates to answer a five question survey about their position on global warming emissions, renewable energy, nuclear power, public transportation and fuel efficiency standards.

The website has generated some alarming responses on these issues from candidates running for federal office. Some even continue to doubt that global warming is really happening. One candidate from Missouri responded to a question about reducing global warming emissions by saying: "At this point I do not believe that the scientific evidence supports the position that global warming if the same exists, is not a function of sun activity rather than human activity."

Many more candidates with these out-of-touch views are likely on the ballot, yet we the voters have had little to no opportunity to hear what they have to say on pressing environmental issues affecting our lives.

Other candidates who, by and large, have been champions of good climate and energy policies, have not even responded to the survey. Perhaps because not enough of their constituents have asked them.

Have your candidates responded yet?

Simply go to CandidAnswers.org, punch in your zip code, and click to ask the candidates vying to represent you in Congress to answer these important questions. Tomorrow, if they still have not answered, ask them again. Keep asking them, and get your friends and family to ask them, until they do it!

After all, you know where you stand on energy and climate issues. Make the candidates air their views so you can step into the voting booth armed with the information you need to elect leaders who understand the important energy and environmental challenges they'll be working to solve on your behalf.

Comments

[marcosweb]

here's a site that has a good article on the differences between the McCain and Obama Environmental plataforms. http://www.livinggreenmag.com/

[Stephen308]

I'm not much for radicalization of the environment to promote far left socialism.

Yesterdays coming ice age is today's junk science. Today's man caused global warming is tomorrows junk science. It's a manufactured blame placing to push the far lefts agenda.

What I'm more interested in personally is what I can do in my living to help. .

I've added insulation to my attic. I have had my furnace cleaned and tuned up, it's very efficient. I've replaced all the bulbs I can with energy savers. My new car gets 50% more mileage than my old car. I turn the heat down in the house in winter. Double pane windows. Insulated walls.

I'm running out of ideas about how I can personally make investments and make significant change in my energy foot print.

If I had my way every congressmen who voted to increase the fuel standards would be run out of office. Not because they increased fuel standards but because they included in that vote a bill to expand the use of corn ethanol...which INCREASES pollution and forces food costs higher around the globe thus killing people. I'd like to see every last one of them run out of office for doing that. I'm tired of feel good, knee jerk legislators who don't think and will do anything to appease the far left environmentalists...even kill people by pushing food costs higher and damage the environment if it sounds good.

[Michale32086]

This has been EXACTLY my point...

I don't mind Green Technologies that will lower my electric bill and save me money at the gas pump. If that reduces our dependency on foreign oil and decrease atmospheric pollution, then that is just an added bonus...

The ecological hysterics are shooting themselves in the foot with their constant fear-mongering.. Approach people in a clam and rational manner and explain the REAL benefits of GREEN will do a LOT more to further the agenda than running around like Chicken Little screaming and yelling that the sky is falling...

Michale.....

[LeftRight]

"The ecological hysterics are shooting themselves in the foot with their constant fear-mongering.. Approach people in a clam and rational manner and explain the REAL benefits of GREEN will do a LOT more to further the agenda than running around like Chicken Little screaming and yelling that the sky is falling..."

You're right, people tend to react better when you approach them gently. The problem is that they also tend to react well when you come at them hard, in favor of the status quo. Unfortunately, the extremists on the right have been spending the last 20+ years (ever since Global Warming became a household word) screaming about how Green Tech will bankrupt the USA. Are they the only ones who are wrong in this debacle, no. But they are the ones who are coming out saying that the status quo is fine, and people LIKE it if they think the status quo is fine.....

In other words, it'd be nice if we could approach people nicely like you say, and talk gently and calmly about it, but they aren't listening! And we DO need to do something soon. Most reputable scientists (using that term in its definition, where they are peer reviewed) are getting worried, because our models show the Earth warming at a SLOWER rate than it is doing, which means that we need to act soon!

[scottman1085]

Maybe BO can lower ocean levels on the sixth day of his term, so he can rest on the seventh.

[hark]

Hell, I don't have to check any website to know where my candidates stand - I live in Idaho. They stand in about 800 B.C. (or don't we go back that far?)

[LeftRight]

Eh, we go back about 6,000 years, which means that the Earth was around for about 4,000 years Before Christ. So if they are only going back to 800 BC, they are not even back to the time of David, and thus are VASTLY more advanced than sarah palin is!

[gabbinjane]

Please do - so that you can vote them out!! If there's actually "global warming", don't you think that big yellow thing in the daylight sky might just might the the 99.999% controlling factor?

[VikingQuest]

Nope, SUVs.

[Michale32086]

AND there is what passes for "science" amongst the HUMAN CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING (Yet The Planet Is Cooling) crowd...

SUVs have more impact than the Sun.... :^/

Michale.....

[BlueInARedState]

It isn't what's comin' in that's causing the warming. It's what's comin' in and staying. That IS caused by us.

[LeftRight]

That big yellow thing is in fact a part of the cause. However, don't you think that since it is MUCH warmer in a greenhouse than outside, especially in the middle of winter, than the SCIENTISTS who are coming out and saying that CO2 acts JUST like the glass in a greenhouse MIGHT have something more than .001%??????

[jkminwa]

Please - go to the IPCC website and read the report.

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm

You will at least understand the physical science.

[mergina]

Neither of the leading candidates that gets the job is going to be able to do a whole hell of a lot with a BANKRUPT system.

The FUTURE OF HUMANITY IS BLEAK AT BEST, very very bleak.

[Michale32086]

"Some even doubt that Global Warming is happening"

Can you blame them??

The Earth has been in a cooling trend for the last ten years. A source that has a LOT better track record than the hysterical Models used by the Chicken Little crowd shows that the planet will continue to be cooler for the next couple decades..

It's hard to sell the idea of Human Caused GLOBAL WARMING when the planet is cooling and will continue to cool..

Michale.....

[LexLuthier]

Be patient with them, Michale, they'll come around eventually. Hell, most of them still believe the Earth is round.

[degenerate1991]

The Earth does have a bit of an elliptical shape to it.

[LeftRight]

The Earth has not been in a cooling phase for the last ten years. The Earth has been warming since the late 1600s, though for the last couple hundred of that time it's been accelerating. The warming may have SLOWED in the last ten years, but it is still warming.

[jkminwa]

Michale -

Follow this link to the Technical Summary from the 2007 Science Report prepared by the IPCC

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-ts.pdf

Go to page 37 and look at figure TS-6. You will see that temperatures are not only warming, but that the rate of change is increasing. If you are going to make claims about climate change using "data," you should be familiar with the data.