A Climate Crisis Message That Works

Yesterday, MoveOn.org announced that former Sen. John Edwards won the straw poll following its Virtual Town Hall Meeting on the Climate Crisis (co-sponsored by Campaign for America's Future and others).

And by a considerable margin. Edwards won 33% of the vote, while Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama -- in that order -- clustered between 15% and 16%.

As the straw poll conducted after MoveOn's previous town hall on Iraq had a distinctly different result (Obama and Edwards leading the pack at 28% and 25% respectively), it further proves that MoveOn members are reacting to what the candidates are saying, and not simply voting for their pre-determined favorites.

So what did Edwards say that stood out from the pack? What should other candidates take from these results?

I noted earlier that on the basic policy points, there was mainly agreement among the candidates on how to combat global warming. And several tied protecting the planet with strengthening the economy and creating good-paying "green-collar" jobs.

But Edwards took it two steps further.

Beyond the positive impacts clean energy would have for the American economy, he argued that demand for renewable fuels would grow the African economy, lifting millions out of poverty.

Also, he contended that breaking our addiction to oil would leave "dangerous regimes" in the Middle East with "no choice" but to reform and undermine "the forces the forces of terrorism, something this president has never understood."

That approach is in line with what Al Gore called for in a recent Time Magazine interview: "If the President made climate change the organizing principle, the filter through which everything else had to flow, then that could really make a huge difference."

The compelling vision offered by Edwards, of how a clean energy future can strengthen the global economy and weaken global terrorism, clearly inspired straw poll voters.

(Similarly, Kucinich placed a surprising second by sketching out a interconnected global vision, promising to "bring wholistic thinking to the White House, so that I see the connection between the fuels that we use, global climate change, and in the case of ethanol, the impact on food production and on the poor...")

But Edwards holds no intellectual property rights on the vision he laid out, and there's nothing stopping other candidates from picking up that ball and running with it.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future