Mediaboss Marketing

She's ahead in the polls but where does Clinton stand on climate change

Over the past year, she has toughened her rhetoric against climate science-denying Republicans and recently brought on former White House adviser John Podesta, architect of Obama's climate strategy, to run her campaign. Credit: United States Senate/Wikipedia

Early in Hillary Clinton's term as secretary of State, climate change expert Nigel Purvis approached her with a wonky request.

It was about using a particular slice of development aid to help communities in Indonesia stop cutting their forestsfilled with the kind of technical jargon that makes some political celebrities yawn. Purvis said he wasn't at all that sure Clintonwho at the time was grappling with a popular revolt in Libya, tensions in Sudan and the burgeoning brutality of Syria's Bashar Assadwould be familiar with this in-the-weeds issue, but she was.

"Most public officials at that level, when they are interacting with people that they're expecting to interact with, are very well-briefed by their staff and able to draw on facts and talking points to say the right things," said Purvis, who served as a climate change negotiator in Bill Clinton's administration and now leads a consulting company.

"What was impressive to me about that experience was that I caught her out in the middle of the country, at a time when she wasn't speaking about climate change and wasn't expecting climate change issues," he said. "She showed a real grasp of not just the problem at the high level but the very concrete solutions the State Department was pursuing."

Clinton, who officially launched her second presidential campaign in a video released yesterday, never developed a reputation for holding climate change dear to her heart like Secretary of State John Kerry, who has championed the issue since the early 1990s. Yet supporters of a 2016 Clinton presidency point out that she campaigned on major energy goals, including dramatically reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury.

As secretary of State, she appointed Todd Stern as America's first-ever special envoy in charge of climate change, pointedly bringing him along on her first trip to Beijing where they made energy a top focus. And when negotiations at the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, hit their lowest point, Clinton swooped in with a game-changing pledge to mobilize $100 billion annually in global climate aid by 2020 that helped bring about a voluntary global agreement.

Over the past year, she has toughened her rhetoric against climate science-denying Republicans and recently brought on former White House adviser John Podesta, architect of Obama's climate strategy, to run her campaign.

Some greens are skeptical But that might not be enough for the green base of voters who might view Clinton with a dose of skepticism for taking a neutral stand on the Keystone XL pipeline. They argue that with Republicans sharpening their knives against President Obama's power plant emissions cuts, the United States needs a president who can be counted on to defend and advance U.S. climate policy.

Originally posted here:
Hillary Clinton May Take Strong Stance on Global Warming