This is the twenty-eighth article in a continuing series by the NRDC Action Fund on the environmental stances of political candidates in key races around the country.
Pennsylvania is a key swing state, solidly “purple” in the current red/blue parlance. Democrat Joe Sestak, a former Vice Admiral and current U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania’s 7th District(western Philadelphia suburbs), and Republican Pat Toomey, who represented Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional District (Allentown, Bethlehem) from 1999 to 2005, are running neck and neck to represent the state in the U.S. Senate. The two candidates are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to environmental issues. Sestak has received a career 96% rating from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), meaning he voted the right way on nearly every environmental issue LCV scored during his tenure in Congress. In contrast, Toomey’s highest LCV score during his six years in Congress was a 20% rating in 2001 – even in his best year Toomey only voted the right way on one in five environmental issues. Among other things, Toomey voted to support oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, against raising fuel economy standards, and against tax incentives for alternative fuels.
This gap is particularly evident in their positions on clean energy and climate legislation. In 2009 Sestak voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the first global warming bill to ever pass a chamber of Congress. In a statement following the vote Sestak said:
I do not want to be on the wrong side of history. Fifteen EPA administrators have made clear the need to address global warming and the provisions of this bill not only make environmental sense, but also economic and strategic sense. We need to spark an unprecedented transition to alternative, clean, and renewable power, to create a new clean energy economy and halt damage to our environment. Last year’s spike in the cost of gasoline, not to mention all of the other instances in which energy prices have hurt us economically in the last three decades, provide a clear signal that the days of our reliance on fossil fuels must end. In Pennsylvania, clean energy companies like Iberdola, Conergy and Gamesa have brought hundreds of new jobs. It is time to lay the framework for far-reaching and sustainable solutions…. The American Clean Energy and Security Act continues to move this country toward a future powered by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
Toomey has been supporting attacking ACES on the campaign trail. In a November 2009 op-ed he erroneously called cap- and-trade legislation a tax that would “cost Pennsylvania more than 70,000 jobs in the years ahead,” reduce coal production “by about 85 percent, and “impos[e] higher gas and electricity prices on all Pennsylvanians.”
The truth, as Sestak wrote on the Huffington Post, is that according to an “independent study conducted by Yale, the University of Illinois, and the University of California” ACES will “create up to 78,000 new Pennsylvania jobs this decade and increase our GDP by upwards of $4.3 billion.” He continued, ACES “will actually increase coal power generation by 17 percent, according to the Department of Energy, by investing nearly $240 billion into next-generation coal technology.” As he pointed out, Toomey’s claims about ACES are so far off because he’s citing industry-funded sources like the anti-environmental National Association of Manufacturers, the pro-fossil-fuel-industry Marcellus Shale Coalition, and the ultra-conservative, Castle Rock Foundation-funded Beacon Hill Institute. As Sestak concluded:
[E]very President since Richard Nixon has pledged to free this country from foreign oil. "Cap and trade" is a conservative, free-market approach developed in the Reagan White House and first implemented by George H.W. Bush. We're losing the race for next-generation technology to communist China.
We can't afford to fall for the same old scare tactics from Big Oil and their politicians.
Phony studies can't hide the fact that energy reform will be good for our country and our economy. That's why the bill I voted for is supported by major manufacturers and power companies like GE, Ford, Shell, and Exelon.
It's time to take the initiative and put our country, and our economy, back on the cutting edge.
The NRDC Action Fund believes that it is important for the public in general, and for the voters of specific states, to be aware of this information as they weigh their choices for November.