Put candidates on the spot about climate

Article by: JAMES P. LENFESTEY
Minneapolis StarTribune
Updated: September 16, 2011 - 10:27 PM

Here are six questions that journalists and voters ought to be asking.

Whatever you think of the performance of the Republican candidates in their first three debates, one failure is clear: that of the journalists posing the questions.

How can any journalist serious about the issues facing national candidates fail to ask at least one question about climate change? And yet not one did -- not John Kyl of CNN in the New Hampshire debate; not NBC's Brian Williams nor Politico's John Harris at the Reagan Library; not the strutting Wolf Blitzer in Tampa.

Yes, there are many important issues for which the America voters needs to hear answers; jobs are on everyone's minds. But what kind of jobs and where they will come from is colored by answers to the climate question.

The raging international debate about black jobs (from traditional coal and oil) vs. green jobs (nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, high tech and conservation) makes no sense at all if climate science isn't on the table and understood.

(More here.)