ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
11/2/12

CITING CLIMATE CHANGE, BLOOMBERG THROWS SUPPORT BEHIND OBAMA

In a surprise endorsement less than a week before the election, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Nov. 1 that he is endorsing Barack Obama for a second term as president due, in part, to his stance on climate change. In an editorial for Bloomberg View, the mayor, an Independent who is wrapping up his third term in office, said that losses caused by Hurricane Sandy earlier this week in New York and much of the Northeast compelled him to publically support Obama. “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be—given this week’s devastation—should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action,” he wrote. 

Bloomberg said that strong presidential leadership is needed on the issue of climate change. “We need leadership from the White House—and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks,” he said. “His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants (an effort I have supported through my philanthropy), which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year.” Bloomberg highlighted Mitt Romney’s leadership on the issue during his time as governor of Massachusetts—the Republican was an ardent supporter of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state cap-and-trade program in the Northeast—but said he was disappointed that the candidate has since backed off his support of pricing carbon. “Since then, he has reversed course, abandoning the very cap-and-trade program he once supported. This issue is too important. We need determined leadership at the national level to move the nation and the world forward,” he said, emphasizing that the nation’s president should “place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics.”

Bloomberg Has Invested Personal Wealth to Mitigate Warming

Bloomberg has spent significant time as mayor working toward limiting New York City’s carbon footprint. He ushered in a city-wide sustainability program, PlaNYC, aimed at reducing the metropolis’ emissions by 16 percent over five years. Under his lead the city also joined the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a partnership of some of the world’s largest cities looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Bloomberg has also spent some of his personal fortune on slowing global warming. In July, he announced that his charity Bloomberg Philanthropies would be donating $50 million over four years to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, an effort aimed at shuttering the U.S. coal fleet in favor of cleaner energy sources.

The endorsement was a surprise pickup for the Obama campaign. His team—as well as Romney’s—had previously courted Bloomberg for his political support but was turned down. Obama said this week in a statement that he is “honored” to have Bloomberg’s endorsement. “While we may not agree on every issue, Mayor Bloomberg and I agree on the most important issues of our time—that the key to a strong economy is investing in the skills and education of our people, that immigration reform is essential to an open and dynamic democracy and that climate change is a threat to our children’s future, and we owe it to them to do something about it,” he said.

The endorsement is also notable in that it brings the issue of climate change to the political forefront just days before an election that has largely ignored the issue and treated it as a niche concern. Climate change was not mentioned in any of the presidential or vice presidential debates for the first time in a generation, and both candidates have been more keen on discussing the extent of their support for domestic energy production and ‘all-of-the-above’ energy platforms rather than climate science or pricing carbon. A mini debate between Obama and Romney campaign surrogates last month was one of the only times the issue was discussed in detail on the trail.