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Mike Johanns, Global Warming Skeptic
Tim Rinne
Just when we’re looking for the political leadership to confront the human role in climate change, U.S. Senate candidate Mike Johanns decides to side with the global warming skeptics.
On page 8 of his campaign document, “Here’s Where I Stand,” Johanns states, “While we know that the earth has experienced a period of warmer temperatures, we do not yet have a scientific explanation upon which scientists agree.” And in a July 1, 2008 interview on NPR NET, he said, “We certainly understand today that there has been some changes in our climate. We’re seein’ some warmer temperatures, that sort of thing. There is just a very, very significant debate about what role man plays in that.”
As evidence for his contrarian view, Johanns cites a February 2008 article published by the “Heartland Institute,” disputing the conclusion by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that global warming is very likely caused by human activities. The Heartland Institute though (which bills itself as the “marketing arm of the free-market movement”) hardly qualifies as an objective scientific source. A March 4, 2008 article in New York Times described the institute as “a Chicago group whose anti-regulatory philosophy has long been embraced by, and financially supported by, various industries and conservative donors.” ExxonMobil, for instance, has provided $676,500 in funding to the institute since 1998, and the institute’s board of directors has included executives from ExxonMobil, Amoco and General Motors.
In publicly siding with the skeptics on global warming, however, Senate candidate Johanns has not only chosen to go against the international scientific consensus on climate change — he’s snubbing the research produced by his own Department of Agriculture during his tenure as Ag Secretary.
Johanns’ USDA served as the lead agency for the September 2007 report, “The U.S. Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3.” The report’s blunt assertion that “robust scientific evidence showing that human-induced climate change is occurring” stands in stark contrast to the Heartland Institute’s claims — and Johanns’ position as a candidate. And while, as a politician, the former governor and Ag Secretary is free to pursue whatever political agenda he chooses, he is not entitled to confuse politics with science.
“Climate change,” he asserts in his campaign document, “has been made into a political football.” And yet Johanns has been the first one in the campaign to play ‘smash mouth’ with the issue on the political gridiron. Claiming that his “opponent in this Senate race has it all wrong,” Johanns chastised Democrat Scott Kleeb for supporting a climate change bill that, he charged, would have “hammered consumers” by raising the gas tax on a gallon of gasoline. “You’ve got the potential here to literally bring consumers to their knees; I mean, could you imagine adding a buck fifty to the price of a gallon of gasoline which is what Scott Kleeb supports by supporting this bill.” Proponents of the bi-partisan legislation hotly disputed the gas tax accusations, but the political damage was done. Johanns had punched the ball down the field and scored his campaign points — at Scott Kleeb’s expense.
Parting company with his party’s own presidential nominee, John McCain, Johanns has made it clear that he’s against mandatory legislation to curb greenhouse emissions. Since he intends to represent Nebraska’s climate-sensitive, agricultural interests in the U.S. Senate, though, we might ask what exactly he’s ‘for.’
Well, apart from more “research” to “better understand climate change” and insisting that environmental laws and regulations be based on “sound science and common sense,” Johanns touts his support for nuclear power and domestic oil and natural gas exploration and promises to be “a champion of corn-based ethanol.” For those who actually do subscribe to the science of global warming and worry about preserving the environment, all of these proposals carry significant risk. Nuclear power constitutes a built-in safety hazard. Fossils fuels increase our carbon footprint. And corn-based ethanol requires huge amounts of Nebraska’s finite water resources.
Johanns also claims to be an advocate renewable energies like wind and solar. But a quick look at his record as governor reveals little in the way of leadership. While Iowa, Kansas and Wyoming were rapidly developing wind energy during his six years in the Governor’s Office, Nebraska developed one measly wind farm (out by Kimball), even though — in Johanns’ own words — Nebraska had the resource potential to be “the Saudi Arabia of Wind.”
This kind of tepid behavior is not the robust leadership Nebraskans (and our endangered environment) are going to be needing from our next U.S. Senator.
Before Mike Johanns is ready to go off to the U.S. Senate, somebody needs to sit down with him and give him a refresher course on what constitutes sound science and common sense public policy.
And for starters, maybe he could begin with some reading produced by his own Department of Agriculture.
It’s really good.
