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Why It’s Impossible To Ignore Climate In A Presidential Foreign Policy Debate

By Stephen Lacey on Oct 22, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney face each other for the final presidential debate tonight. The conversation will focus exclusively on foreign policy — potentially opening up numerous opportunities to talk about climate and energy issues.

If the last two debates are any guide, the candidates and moderator may ignore the issue of climate altogether. But as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rightly pointed out in a speech last week, clean energy and climate policy will continue to be deeply important to U.S. foreign affairs, and the next president will play a strong role in “shaping the global energy future.”

Indeed, almost every major international issue — energy access, international trade, food prices, technology sharing, military operations — have a deeply embedded climate component.

There are a number of different angles that could be explored in tonight’s conversation. In a preview of the final debate, Brad Plumer of the Washington Post points out the national security implications of a changing climate:

There have been a whole slew of reports in recent years about how global warming could pose a security threat to the United States. The Pentagon even highlighted climate change in its 2010 defense review. There’s the possibility that droughts, floods and water shortages could destabilize key regions, for one. These things aren’t certain—here’s a more skeptical take on the prospect of “global warring” that I wrote a few years ago—but they’re on the minds of plenty of foreign-policy analysts.

Of course, the impact of global warming is, after all, a global issue. After the first debate, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times explained why he thought the final debate was the best place for a discussion around climate, “Global warming, both in its most significant drivers and consequences, remains a global issue.”

Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations touched upon this same issue in a post today. He makes a very important point about why climate change why isn’t just a single issue that can be separated from others:

Climate change is a really big global problem. You don’t need to be convinced of impending doom to believe this – you just need to accept that we’re running some pretty large risks. When the moderator of the last debate half-apologized to “the climate people” for not touching on the subject,  she revealed something important: too many people think about climate change as a special interest issue. It isn’t, and the candidates’ approaches deserve to be debated. This one is simple to tee off: just ask each candidate what he’d do.

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Security

Former Israeli Intel Chief On Iran: Romney ‘Destroying Any Chance Of A Resolution Without War’

By Hamed Aleaziz on Oct 22, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Efraim Halevy, former chief of Israel’s spy agency the Mossad, said in two separate interviews on Sunday and Monday that President Obama’s approach toward Iran has been “courageous” and “brave.” Halevy told Al-Monitor that: “Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere.” Halevy contrasted the approach with Mitt Romney’s:

HALEVY: Negotiating with Iran is perceived as a sign of beginning to forsake Israel. That is where I think the basic difference is between Romney and Obama. What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. Therefore when [he recently] said, he doesn’t think there should be a war with Iran, this does not ring true. It is not consistent with other things he has said.

Halevy also acknowledged the impact of recent sanctions. During a conversation on Israeli radio on Monday, the former spy chief attributed Iran’s recent economic problems to the sanctions passed by the Obama administration. He told Al-Monitor: “The sanctions have been very effective. They are beginning to really hurt.” These comments reinforce a speech that Halevy delivered at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. last Thursday, where he said: “The fact of the matter is the sanctions have not brought the end to the program but sanctions are hurting very much.” Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, has also said that sanctions against Iran have been “effective.” Halevy’s statements undermine the Romney campaign’s claim that President Obama’s handling of the Iran issue has been ineffective and that Romney would be better at the “negotiating table.”

Halevy himself urged negotiations, saying to Al-Monitor: “I realized that dialogue with an enemy is essential. There is nothing to lose. Although the claim was, if you talk to them, you legitimize them. But by not talking to them, you don’t de-legitimate them. So this convinced me, that we all have been very superficial in dealing with our enemies. Not everything you try succeeds. But you have to be willing to try.” His comments come on the heels of a New York Times report that Iran and the U.S. have agreed “in principle” to direct negotiations with each other. When Romney was asked if he supported such an approach, he refused to answer.

Responding to the report, Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, said that Israel would support direct negotiations if they could halt the nuclear program in Iran.

The Obama administration, along with its European allies, believe that an Iran with a nuclear weapon is a threat and have implemented several rounds of crippling sanctions aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. The sanctions have resulted in an estimated loss of $48 billion a year in Iranian oil revenues. U.S., Israeli and U.N. officials have repeatedly pointed out that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon.

NEWS FLASH

Trans Model Petitions World Health Organization For Affirmation | Jenna Talackova made international headlines earlier this year when the Miss Universe Canada pageant originally refused to let her compete because she is transgender. Not only was she eventually allowed to compete, but she placed in the top 12. Now, Talackova is reaching out the World Health Organization, petitioning the organization to stop classifying transgender identities as mental disorders. Just as the American Psychiatric Association is creating a new non-disordered classification of “gender dysphoria,” the WHO is also in the process of revising its guidelines. Her petition is a timely call for an important change:

Related Posts

Justice

Federal Court Halts Execution Of Mentally Ill Man Who Believes He Is The ‘Prince Of God’

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 22, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Death Row Inmate John Errol Ferguson

On Saturday, a federal trial court in Florida granted an emergency stay of execution to Florida inmate John Errol Ferguson. Ferguson has paranoid schizophrenia and a history of hallucinations. He believes that he is the “Prince of God” and that the Florida prisons are preparing him for “ascension.” Ferguson was scheduled to be executed tomorrow.

The order by Judge Daniel Hurley, a Clinton appointee, provides simply that Ferguson’s execution must not take place at least until Hurley is able to hold a hearing on his petition for a more lasting relief and fully consider Ferguson’s case. Oral arguments are currently scheduled before Judge Hurley on Friday.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Ferguson’s request to consider his case last week. The reason why this was not the end of Ferguson’s ability to seek legal relief is because the U.S. Supremes turned aside an appeal from a Florida Supreme Court, and federal law permits inmates to file a petition for a “writ of habeas corpus” in federal trial court once all state court avenues have been exhausted, even if the U.S. Supreme Court declines to review the state judiciary’s decision.

Nevertheless, Ferguson’s fate is far from certain. Even if he convinces Judge Hurley to declare him unfit to be executed, his decision will appeal to the notoriously conservative Eleventh Circuit, and Ferguson’s case could ultimately land in the Supreme Court.

Health

How Rising Health Care Costs Impact The National Budget

By Jeff Spross on Oct 22, 2012 at 4:53 pm

The defining problem of the United States federal budget is that the cost of health care is growing much faster than prices in the overall economy. The result is that Medicare and, to a lesser extent, Medicaid — the two programs dedicated to providing their enrollees with health coverage — become more expensive each year even when the benefit packages they provide remain the same. Buying the same amount of health care is costing the two programs ever more money, and that cost is rising faster than the increased tax revenue the government receives each year due to economic growth.

Today, the Incidental Economist flagged a remarkable set of graphs from Robert Dittmars at McSweeney’s that attempt to identify just how much this specific problem has contributed to the country’s deficit spending. Dittmars calculated what annual deficits (the blue line) and the national debt (the green line) would look like without health care costs factored in. When the lines go above zero the nation is running a surplus, and when they go below zero we’re adding to the debt:

A few points emerge from this graph concerning what our budget situation would have looked like if it weren’t for the rising trend in health care costs:

The debt was largely been created under Reagan and solved under Clinton. Prior to 1980, annual budgets were balanced and the debt level was stable. Deficits and the debt then began to significantly increase, until we swung up into massive budget surpluses in the mid 1990s. In fact, the Clinton-era correction was overkill — the green line of cumulative debt goes well above zero. But since there’s no such thing as “positive” debt, that would’ve just meant more revenue left over for other programs to invest in the country’s needs.

Obama would’ve started from a much better budget position. While our deficits since the recession have been entirely necessary in order to support the struggling economy, their size has been alarming. But if it hadn’t been for health care costs, Obama’s deficits would’ve been smaller by several hunted billion dollars. He also would’ve started with a debt level essentially at zero, rather than being forced to add his deficits to an already sizeable debt problem.

We wouldn’t have unsustainable government spending. Under Dittmar’s calculations, debt increases were only a problem when the twin GOP goals of tax cuts and military spending got out of hand. And they were easily reigned in by subsequent budget corrections. Which means that outside of health care programs, government is not growing at an unsustainable rate. You would never know this from the budgets of Mitt Romney or the House Republicans, which both slash non-defense and non-Medicare spending to astonishing degrees.

Now, in some sense differentiating between Medicare’s payroll taxes and other revenue streams is arbitrary. At the end of the day, a certain amount of revenue comes into the government from all taxes, and a certain amount goes out in spending programs. What Dittmar’s calculation does clarify is that when Medicare and Medicaid were created, lawmakers assumed a certain amount of revenue would be necessary to fund them. Since then, the actual cost of these programs has diverged to an ever greater degree from that assumption — not because of any failure of discipline or frugality on the government’s part, but simply because of how the health care economy evolved.

Economy

Why The Charge That Obama Is ‘Anti-Business’ Is Ridiculous, In Three Charts

By Pat Garofalo on Oct 22, 2012 at 4:45 pm

Republicans, during the current campaign, have continuously labeled the Obama administration as “anti-business.” “The president and his people just don’t understand how the private sector works,” said Mitt Romney. “Too often, you find yourself facing a government that looks at you like you’re the bad guys.” “This is certainly the most anti-business administration since the Carter years,” added Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “I think he borders on being hostile to the private sector,” said former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR).

But three simple charts show that this charge is detached from reality. First, as the New York Times noted, since Obama came into office, “the Dow Jones industrial average has gained 67.9 percent. That’s an extremely strong performance — the fifth best for an equivalent period among all American presidents since 1900″:

Next, the S&P 500, measuring the 500 largest publicly traded companies, is up 80 percent:

Finally, corporate profits have soared back beyond their pre-recession heights:

Corporations made a record $824 billion last year. The Obama administration has also cut taxes for small businesses several times, and, of course, presided over a rescue of the auto industry that was almost universally opposed by Republicans. If this is anti-business, it seems that the business world could use more of it.

LGBT

Focus On The Family President: Gays Are In ‘Pain’ And At Battle With God

By Zack Ford on Oct 22, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Last week, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly took some time to chat with the extremely anti-gay radio host Janet Mefford about how to “represent God’s heart” when debating LGBT activists. Regardless of how he softens his message, it’s still one of condescension and disdain, because gays are in “pain” and at battle with “the creator of the universe”:

DALY: When you’re on CNN debating and the homosexual activist is shouting over you, you don’t turn around and shout him down. You take it, and then you say, “I understand this person’s pain; however, as I read Scripture, this is how I’m informed.” And the reality is, Janet, the battle that they have is not with us, it’s with the Creator of the universe, and that’s where they’ve gotta take that battle. And that’s where I like to try to point them. I’m simply trying to live out the Scripture; they’ve got to take it up with the author of the Scripture.

Listen to it (via Jeremy Hooper):

Evangelical Christians have no problem admitting that “we’re all sinners,” but as Daly makes clear here, that doesn’t mean that the “homosexual activist” is still less than.

Climate Progress

Let’s Raise The Voltage In The Presidential Energy Debate

By Climate Guest Blogger on Oct 22, 2012 at 4:15 pm

by Bill Becker

While energy got some airtime in the second presidential debate, neither candidate hit at the weakest spots in the other’s positions. Mitt Romney’s energy platform ignores the substantial downsides of fossil fuels and reveals a misunderstanding of how the real world works. President Obama has presided over a national energy strategy that he admits is a  “hodgepodge”.

This is a topic that deserves far more attention before Nov. 6. After all, we all use energy. We all pay for it. We all breathe its pollution. We all depend on it to be there when we need it. If there is one issue that affects every American of every age, place and income level, it’s energy.

Here are the some of the details that didn’t come out in the debate, starting with a look at Gov. Romney’s policies.

The energy paper the Romney campaign released in August presumably is the definitive statement of his energy plans. He proposes that the United States achieve energy independence by 2020 by producing more oil, coal and natural gas. What we couldn’t produce ourselves, we’d import from Canada and Mexico.

Energy Efficiency: There is no mention of energy efficiency in Romney’s plan, even though efficiency is universally regarded as the easiest, cleanest and least expensive way to obtain “new energy.”  According to the American Council for an Energy Efficiency Economy (ACEEE), we waste 86% of the energy we burn in the United States, an inexcusable lack of productivity. Inefficiency means wasted dollars for every energy consumer including our biggest, the federal government. Inefficiency produces pollution, which results in more government regulation.  It makes our companies less competitive.

Energy waste costs jobs. Skip Laitner, an adviser to the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), an economist and senior fellow at ACEEE, estimates that continued energy inefficiency could cost the U.S. economy as many as 15 million jobs in the next couple of decades – five times the 3 million jobs Romney says his energy policies would create.

On the other hand, improvements in energy efficiency would be an economic stimulus that keeps on stimulating. Families, schools and businesses would enjoy the equivalent of new tax-free disposable income that otherwise would have been spent on energy bills.

Competitive Energy Markets: The Romney plan says, “instead of distorting the (energy) playing field, the government should be ensuring that it remains level.” But the governor wants taxpayers to continue subsidizing the same fossil and nuclear power industries that have been on the public dole for generations while he has opposed government support for renewable energy. He wants to confine the government’s role in renewable energy development to basic research, but open more public lands to oil and gas drilling.  There goes the level playing field.

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Security

Romney Adviser Falsely Claims Obama Was ‘Silent’ During Iran’s Green Revolution

By Hamed Aleaziz on Oct 22, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Dan Senor, the Romney campaign’s chief foreign policy adviser, said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today that President Obama stayed “silent” during Iran’s Green Revolution in 2009:

SENOR: The president chose not to weigh in on behalf of dissidents, with the theory you just articulated, that to weigh in would strengthen the regime, and the regime would use that, would argue, you know what the Americans are meddling, they argue that anyways. We didn’t weight in, and Khamenei and Ahmadinejad were still accusing us of weighing in so we stayed out of it, we got nothing out of it, and we let down the dissident movement. We let down the dissident movement. People storm the streets in a country, fighting for freedom and the American president is silent? The American president is silent.

Mitt Romney himself has repeatedly used the line to attack President Obama’s foreign policy. While it might make for a nice soundbite, the argument doesn’t align with the facts. That’s because on June 15, 2009, just two days after post-election demonstrations began in Iran, President Obama spoke out against the Iranian government’s hard-handed crackdown on Iranian activists:

OBAMA: I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days. And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.
And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

The President reiterated his comments a day later in another press conference.

OBAMA: What I will repeat and what I said yesterday is that when I see violence directed at peaceful protestors, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it’s of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people. And my hope is, is that the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices, to express their aspirations. I do believe that something has happened in Iran where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past, and that there are people who want to see greater openness and greater debate and want to see greater democracy. How that plays out over the next several days and several weeks is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide. But I stand strongly with the universal principle that people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed.

While some Iranian protesters did reportedly call for Obama to endorse them more forcefully, what’s missing in President Obama’s initial response is a full-on endorsement of Iran’s reformist candidates in that election, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s Nobel Peace Prize winning activist, believed this was the right move, saying: “What happens in Iran regards the people themselves, and it is up to them to make their voices heard. I respect his comments on all the events in Iran, but I think it is sufficient.”

Iranian journalist Omid Memarian, who himself was imprisoned by the Iranian government, says Obama rightly decided to not name Mousavi or Karroubi as the protests built up: “If President Obama had publicly supported the pro-democracy protesters, he would have played right into the regime’s hands. The movement would have lost its authenticity in the eyes of a wide range of supporters, irrespective of class, ethnicity, or political beliefs. Remember that in 1953 the CIA helped overthrow the most democratic government Iran had ever seen; for years, the American government also helped prop up the corrupt and feckless government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It’s no wonder that people in Iran, and the Middle East, are highly suspicious of any U.S. political interference.”

NEWS FLASH

Texas Prosecutor Turned Judge Allegedly Withheld Evidence From Wrongfully Convicted Man | Michael Morton served 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, the murder of his wife. Meanwhile, Ken Anderson, the former prosecutor who convicted Morton, had a successful career as a district attorney and now as a judge. Judge Anderson now faces disbarment, however, due to allegations that he intentionally withheld evidence from Morton that could have prevented the innocent man from spending most of his adult life behind bars.

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