Democrats and leftists are excited about the accelerating crack-up of the Bush administration, which–as acerbic Dana Milbank of the Washington Post noted in the aftermath of Katrina–no longer can even effectively stage a photo op. (Interesting, Fox News is now taking the position that supporting the troops means attacking those trying to shove words into their mouths–even if those people are Presidential handlers from the Bush Administration. Maybe they can tell which way the wind is blowing.)
But those of us on the left hand side of the dial concerned about enviro issues need to keep our cool. It’s a long way to the next national elections, first of all, and when it comes to global warming, the fact remains that we need to move not just the elites, but vast middle of the country, the self-identified moderates who tend to lean to the right, as Kevin Drum of the "Political Animal" site at the Washington Monthly has eloquently written about on many occasions. Drum points out that according to numerous polls, self-identified liberals are down to about twenty percent of the electorate, which is why it’s so important to reach beyond this natural audience.
One piece of very good news is that the most popular politician on the national stage, John McCain, is leading the fight on this issue in the Senate, and is said by some grumbling right-wingers to be "obsessed" with global warming. But what excites yours truly is that McCain–unlike Gore and quite a few leftists–doesn’t talk about global warming as a distant prospect that could bring total disaster to far-off places and species at some point in the alarming future–the disaster movie approach.
No, McCain travels the country to bring the issue home. In Arizona he talks about drought (which according to NOAA, is now in its sixth year in much of the Southwest). In Minnesota he talks about ducks, and how enviros and hunters are working together to save them…from global warming.
This week, we’re stopping at Buffalo Creek, Minnesota, home of the Prairie Pothole Region: the most important breeding ground for ducks in the United States. But this critical area is at risk.
With global temperatures rising by just a few degrees Fahrenheit, the future of this crucial habitat and the ducks that breed there are at stake.
As temperatures rise, ducks migrate farther north in warmer weather in the Northern Hemisphere. These ducks risk losing a place to live, eat, breed and survive. The climate changes taking place affect young ducklings’ ability to survive their first migration. Rising temperatures even lowers the rate of survival for the food that ducks eat and feed to their young. Most notably, the population of ducks could decline by about 70% in about 70 years if current projections play themselves out. This would be caused mostly by the fact that 91% of the wetlands that ducks need would have dried up.
In a rare coupling, environmentalists and hunters have joined forces to call attention to the threatened duck. Hunters spent $1.3 billion in the United States in 2001, $99 million of that was spent in Minnesota alone. Hunters and environmentalists join together to highlight the demonstrable fact that change is already occurring. The migratory and brooding cycles of many types of birds has significantly changed compared to patterns from 1960. Hunters know that their livelihood is at stake as climate change takes a toll on the duck population in the United States. Environmentalists know that wetlands are drying up as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases and temperature change follows suit.
Check out McCain’s travel log for more information on "virtual march" on Washington.
Kit Stolz 