Political Dialogue

This presidential campaign year the environment has not been the focus that it should be, with the downturn in the economy and the increasing importance of immigration policy in peoples' minds. However the candidates have put forth their environmental views and would be policies were they to come into office and many of the differ in the way they approach issues.

Ron Paul, is a small "c" conservative and so believes there should be small government, with a little regulation, but not a lot of services. His major ideas on environmental issues are to protect property rights, which he believes would correct the environmental wrongs and would increase the cost of pollution for the polluters. This is a 'market liberal' approach since he focuses on correcting the broken markets, which favor the polluters and the wealthy, and that make those having their rights stomped on suffer. For instance he voted against using tax dollars to subsidize logging in National Forests, which ties in which his belief that government should not tax much but also should not spend much.

Hillary Clinton takes a different view and it is more 'institutionalist' since she wants more regulation and more government investment to promote green energy and technology. Her plan put emphasis on a mandatory cap and trade policy that would have 100% of permits and would also invest to become more energy independent. She proposes that we should reduce electricity 20% from proposed levels by 2020 by becoming more energy efficient and would want to put $50 billion in a Strategic Energy fund, partly paid for by oil companies to invest in alternative energy. Most of her other programs rely on regulation and believe that government is needed in the solution, but she has one proposed policy that is more 'social green'. This policy is a Connie Mae program which which would give middle and low income people the ability to buy green homes and to invest in green home improvements. This begins to address the power issues and gives support to those who want to be more environmentally friendly. In the US it can be expensive to be green!

In my opinion Hillary Clinton's plan is better because Ron Paul does not address the global warming issue (he is a skeptic). CO2 is the only pollutant, and it is only a pollutant when it overwhelms the Earth's sinks, that does not decrease with affluence, but increase and causes more harm. Although his ideas would help solve local environmental degradation, probably even better than straight regulation, he does not address the global pollution problems, in which we all bear the cost because of the nature of the planet. Although I believe Clinton's plans are not strong enough to really solve the problem, she has a good start and believes that global warming is a problem that must be addressed. Although I like many of Ron Paul's ideas I believes that he falls short on this issue, although he does believe that local environmental degradation is a big problem.