Blue-green on both coasts

Climate & Clean Energy Can Win Elections

Throughout the 2010 midterm election cycle -- and well before -- most politicians dared not even utter the word climate change. Sometime after the House passed its comprehensive energy bill and the Senate stalled, clean energy and climate got written into the media's horse-racing narrative as being dirty words in a political context; losing messages. The GOP lumping both in with cap and trade, which they falsely blasted as a tax, probably had something to do with that. Soon, clean energy and climate action-supporting politicians -- most notably, Obama -- gave up on trying to spread the word about those causes. They figured it was a losing battle. But they were wrong: To see why, and how climate and clean energy can win elections, look no further than California.
California, as you're likely aware by now, was one of the few states where Democratic candidates were able to beat back the insurgent Tea Party -- both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina lost their races (for governor and senator, respectively) to Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. And more importantly, California turned out against the Tea Party-favored Proposition 23, which would have halted the state's climate and clean energy law.
What's interesting in all three of these major victories, is one common thread: The candidates, and the coalition of 'No on 23' campaigners, never turned their back on climate and clean energy issues -- even with the rising tide of climate denialism and the anti-regulatory sentiment in full swing across the nation. On the contrary, they made climate and clean energy a campaign issue.

Here in Connecticut (proud to say we stayed Blue) green was also a topic but not as looming as in Calif. Wish other states/areas were as concerned.