Interesting read in Grist concerning SoD nominee Chuck Hagel's semi hidden climate hawk credentials. I've been ambivalent about this nomination which is supposingly coming today because, you know, on the one hand Hagel's voting record is less than stellar and he was a major obstacle to the Kyoto Climate Treaty. He's still a republican after all..or is he? On the other hand Hagel has a maverick climate change record that would make many Democrats proud.
In 2007, he and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced a bill “that would require federal intelligence agencies to collaborate on a National Intelligence Estimate to evaluate the security challenges presented by climate change,” as Grist reported at the time. Though this one didn’t make it to the president’s desk, it did prod the intelligence community to conduct an assessment, which found that Climate Change does indeed pose numerous security threats.
As Hagel told
Grist in 2005:
I don’t think you can separate environmental policy from economic policy or energy policy. They are circles of connection and they overlap each other. You can’t have economic growth without energy, and you can’t talk about the use of oil, coal, and natural gas without talking about environmental policy, because those carbon-based energy sources emit carbon, and that’s not good. The only way you can realistically deal with these issues is to come up with policy that integrates all three.
And to PBS
Frontline in 2007:
Well, global warming, like all environmental issues, affects our energy resources, our energy base, our use of energy. It affects our economy. … If a nation does not have strong, stable, vibrant economic and energy bases, then it has a weak national security base. So global warming, climate change all affect that, because it is all woven into the same fabric.
I may be coming off the fence to full support for his nomination. We need all the support we can get for climate change mitigation.