I Believe This is What The Republicans Should Be Hammered On.

[Uncle Joe]

Much more on link.

The Green Gap: Republican Candidates and Climate Change

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3922730&page=1

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When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report on Nov. 18 containing an almost apocalyptic vision of what is likely to ensue unless the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions begins as soon as five years from now, the GOP presidential candidates were quiet.

Instead, the Democrats appear to have co-opted the issue of climate change, in no small part due to Al Gore's association with the issue through his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," which won an Oscar this year, and the Bush administration's early position as a global warming skeptic. Also, the Democratic presidential candidates regularly, if often, generally talk about the issue.

The risk for the Republicans is that moderate Republican voters and independents who are concerned about global warming could come to see it as "a Democratic issue" -- one on which the Democratic candidates are seen as more forceful and concerned -- come November 2008. There could develop what Time magazine's Washington political editor Ana Marie Cox called "the green gap" between the two parties.

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Last spring, Thompson seemed to mock the issue, writing in the National Review Online that warming on other planets led some to "wonder if Mars and Jupiter, nonsignatories to the Kyoto treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle." More recently, as a presidential candidate, he has said global warming is real.

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[AtomicKitten]

1. There is so much material which we aren't utilizing.

I would love to chip in for a commercial that shows clips of the GOP rockstars and all their greatest hits such as Coulter slamming the 9/11 widows, Dr. Laura slamming military wives, well, you get my drift.

Democrats need to go on the offense. We're taking our country back this time.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I agree AT, that sounds like a splendid idea!

:thumbsup: :)

[TankLV]

2. Sorry - but the rest of the country doesn't see it that way - it's a "non-issue"...

I agree - it IS an important issue - but for the general public - and a vast majority - it's just not "sexy" at all...

Mortagages, Health Care, Oil Prices, God, Gays, Abortion - all are THE issues still - climate stuff is just not on the first ten pages of anybodys list...

[Uncle Joe]

4. I believe the Republicans are beginning to see that differently and

that's why they're beginning to change their tune, regarding this issue. All we need to do is make the connection or draw the dots for the general public showing the cause and effect of global warming climate change and it's depressing effect on the economy, drought, floods and forest fires hurts real estate appreciation, which in turn hurt the general economy, less jobs, more foreclosures.

For instance I can't imagine too many people wanting to move in to the Southeast and Western parts of the nation in general and Georgia in particular with their record breaking drought. Some credit Australia's seven year drought and their former Prime Minister's stance against the issue of global warming as to why he was voted out of power.

The media have only recently begun to cover this issue with the import is deserves. In addition I believe the negative effects of global warming climate change will only become more self-evident to the general public with time, as it shows increasingly adverse affects to the health of the nation. Skyrocketing oil prices, the exploding debt and the melting dollar are added incentives to look at alternative forms of energy which benefit the environment while simultaneously making us less dependent on the most volatile region of the world, meaning leas motivation to fight war over oil.

Google has just started to get in to the alternative energy business. I believe this snow ball of companies and cities joining the battle will only grow larger as it rolls down hill.

Edit for link to Google Story.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3080326&mesg_id=3080326

Source: ABC News

Google Inc. is expanding into alternative energy in its most ambitious effort yet to ease the environmental strain caused by the company's voracious appetite for power to run its massive computing centers.

As part of a project announced Tuesday, the Internet search leader and its philanthropic arm will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a quest to lower the cost of producing electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and the sun.

If Google realizes its goal, the cost of solar power should fall by 25 to 50 percent, co-founder Larry Page said in an interview

The Mountain View-based company initially hopes to harvest cleaner-burning electricity to meet its own needs and sell power to other users or license the technology that emerges from its initiative, dubbed "Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal," or "REC."

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WireStory?id=3922073&p...