Michele Bachmann, a Republican Presidential candidate from Minnesota, is a strong, outspoken individual on many issues, including Gay rights, abortion, anti-American conspiracies, and the environment is not an issue Bachmann is shy of talking about.
However, her views aren’t to everyone’s taste. Bachmann does not believe in global warming, and instead insists it is a “hoax”, perhaps it is part of another anti-American conspiracy that keep happening in the world. As she doesn’t believe that global warming is anything other than “voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax," she doesn’t agree that something should be done about climate change and as such her voting record in Congress has reflected this view.
The belief that global warming is a hoax leads to her other views and actions in government legislation, such as in 2010 she supported and signed the Contract from America, which is a pledge by Congress to ensure that federal cap-and-trade programmes reduce carbon emissions is stopped as Bachmann wanted to “Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation's global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.”
Bachmann wants to stop costly regulations, which is a shared thought in the UK also, yet the regulation that Bachmann wants to cut would directly influence the environment and the environmental standards in the US. Bachmann believes that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be the first regulation to be cut. “I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA....It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America.”
During 2009-2010, Bachmann received more than $70,000 for her campaign from contributors from the energy sector, with over ¾ of that money coming from gas and oil interests. Perhaps this money helps to influence her already formulated, strong views on the environment and the attention that it deserves.
The list of issues that Bachmann has concerning the environment does not stop there, there are many more, yet if popularity ratings are anything to go by as she is only polling at 7% popularity, America and the rest of the World will not be affected by Bachmann and her skewed views.
Worryingly, Bachmann is not alone in having strong views about the environment, the current front runner in the polls for the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney (currently leading the poll at a staggering 14%) sees the environment in purely economical terms, which is his general attitude to all other topics, and does support green energy, to a degree, as long as there are financial benefits involved. Romney is currently described as “unsure” about climate change claiming that "we should not take extreme measures when we are unsure of human role in global warming” following the argument that the world has throughout history become warmer and colder and the actions of humans on earth are doing nothing to change this. Although Romney has been an advocate of pro-climate change policies, his decisions to support these have been based on economical reasoning alone.
There is, thankfully, one candidate who seems to have their head screwed on right when it comes to the environment, Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty has a good prior record in environmental action and in 2007, he was ranked by Greenopia as the fifth greenest Republican governor in the country and the 19th greenest overall. He has been a supporter of green policies, yet doesn’t appear to be too happy about EPA writing in a letter to government that the “EPA should offer input regarding complex energy and environmental policy initiatives, like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but feel that these policies are best developed by elected representatives at the state and national level, not by a single federal agency.” Pawlenty has solid opinions regarding the environment; however, they may not be favoured by other GOP members or voters.
Pawlenty looks unlikely to become President, or even the Republican candidate, as he is polling at under 8% and there are rumours that a large majority of his top aides are working for little or no pay, which may lead to the aides jumping ship to a candidate who can actually pay for their time and effort.
The environment is an issue which each Republican candidate has an opinion on, and rightly so, yet no one candidate appears to be the full rounded person needed to be a good challenge to Obama in next year’s election.
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