An Open Letter to the League of Conservation Voters regarding their recently published "2008 Presidential Primaries Voter Guide", one that rightfully focuses on Climate Change as the overriding issue, but which also ignores the true possibility of change.

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This morning, I received a copy of a press release that accompanied the League of Conservation Voters "2008 Presidential Primaries Voter Guide." I found the announcement both disappointing and filled with opportunity. It motivated me to respond.

Dear Mr. Dugan:

I noted with pleasure the following statement in your Voter's Guide Press Release.

"No matter who is nominated by each political party, LCV plans to work to elect the candidate best qualified to take on the issue of global warming as president," Karpinski said. "A comprehensive plan for confronting this problem is good for jobs, good for the economy, good for national security, good for the consumer and good for the planet.

You are making a commitment to support the candidate "best qualified" to take on global warming, looking at "each political party." I am interpreting that to mean that you wold support a Green Party candidate if they had the best plan to address global warming. There are some advantages to your doing so.

• A Green Party Candidate would owe no loyalty to any corporate interest because they would not have taken corporate donations. This would give them much greater freedom of action.
• Supporting a Green Party Candidate would signal to both of the corporate parties that neither can consider the League of Conservation Voters endorsement an automatic right, a viewpoint that I have heard from some local Democratic Party candidates.

You are absolutely correct to focus on this one issue. It is now, and will be for some time to come, the over-riding ecological issue for America. We have just experienced an embarrassing performance by our government in Bali. At the same time we have seen an energy bill passed by Congress that falls far short of what is required while the Omnibus Spending measure is filled with special benefits for energy interests that would never have been approved in the energy bill with everyone giving it close scrutiny.

I would also like to see the League of Conservation Voters give their support to the idea of a Science Debate 2008. The public needs a way to separate those candidates who truly understand the role of science in determining environmental policy from those who only talk a good game.

If we are going to ever see the changes in policy that we require, we need a shock to the political system. For the League of Conservation voters to give equal coverage to the Green Party candidates, or even to withhold endorsement from all candidates, might just be the shock that is required.

Wes Rolley
CoChair, EcoAction Committee
Green Party

Authors Website: http://cagreening.blogspot.com/

Authors Bio:
Greens come from many backgrounds. There are more than a few who were, like myself, once Republicans and who left that party... or rather found that the party left them. Right now, having found a political home with the Greens, I want to make sure that the Green Party of California does not leave me. I am too old to go through this again.

Maybe as much to the point as we go through the coming years, is the fact that I was born in the rural mid-west. My parents were very much the products of the Depression and that never left me. My father lost a lot of confidence along with his grocery store in 1930 as banks failed and credit dried up. Maybe I was always between knowing that I had some ability and knowing that failure was always just around the corner.

My mother frequently said that she often never knew where the next meal was coming from but that we never, ever went hungry.

Allergies to farm products (corn, wheat, oats, alfalfa) pushed us out of the midwest to Flagstaff, AZ when Barry Goldwater was a Senator and Stewart Udall was a Congressman, two men who shared an appreciation for our connections with the environment. Maybe that is what pulled me in the Green Party direction.

An interesting sidelight is that while living in Udall's district I went to High School with another future Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt.

Along the way, I went to a small christian college for small Christians, developed an appreciation for those who are seeking the truth about their lives and a distrust for those who say that the truth has been revealed to them.