A 'climate denier' too?
One of the first high profile things that Hagel worked on after coming to the U.S. Senate in 1997 was going after the Kyoto climate accord. He was a congressional observer at the meeting and, along with the late coal champion Sen. Robert Byrd, authored the resolution against it.
To be fair, that measure passed 95-0 and Hagel's objections echoed that of many members, namely that too little was being asked of mega-polluters India and China. But it portended future opposition to environmental measures. Daily Kos reminds us that former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recounts how, with Dick Cheney's prodding, Hagel wrote a letter questioning new emissions standards put out by Christie Whitman's EPA. Their full account is here.
All of this is relevant to the defense secretary's job because of the huge energy impact the Pentagon has with all those ships, planes, trucks, troops, missiles, and helicopters. It matters because of all of the green initiatives launched under Bob Gates. My National Journal colleagues, Coral Davenport and Yochi Dreazen, have done great reporting on this. Read their work to see how vital a green Pentagon has become to a national green strategy.
After I first posted this item, I got a shout from Andrew Holland who worked on energy and climate issues as a legislative assistant to Sen. Hagel and is now the Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate Policy with the American Security Project where Hagel is on the board. He notes that Hagel, as a senator, directed the National Intelligence Estimate, the government's top report, to investigate climate change. Holland also told me about a new report put out by the American Security Project. It's on climate and Hagel said of it:
“America and the world face unprecedented, complex, and interconnected 21st Century challenges. Environmental issues will continue to have unpredictable and destabilizing effects on developing and developed countries alike.”
That does not sound like Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Senator and climate change denier.Those 'Zionist bloggers' will try anything to derail Hagel, won't they?
Shabbat Shalom.
Labels: Chuck Hagel
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:05 PM
3 Comments:
Carl, your criticism of Hagel for his opposition to global warming/climate change" legislation is rather interesting. That's the only policy of his, for which I'd offer my wholehearted support. After all, not everyone has bought into the conventional wisdom about the so-called dangers of AGW.
If AGW turns out to be a reality, it can't occur fast enough to satisfy me, as I live in central Ontario. If it ultimately proves to be a baseless concern, Hagel will be seen as correct, and will have saved western taxpayers a lot of money.
Let's attack him because of his hostility toward Jews/Israelis, and not because of his opinion on a totally unrelated problem.
None of these Democrats, of any religion, will care about these LGBT or Climate/Gaia issues. What the Obama Posse needs is a Secy of Defense who will be willing to use the U.S. military to whack Israel under the NATO Responsibility to Protect doctrine. To help Erdogen manipulate the Syrian issue to a fever pitch so that it 1) lands on Turkey, triggering NATO and 2) spills rockets or overwhelming "refugees" onto Israel so that you have to defend your borders, stopping the refugees somehow, which they will use to trigger Responsibility to Protect. Voila! NATO jets whacking Israeli civilians, just like the dry run dress rehearsal in Libya. It takes a special Mearsheimer/Wald American to sign on to be in charge of leading that operation. Hagel will do it, so they will put him in.
For the left, Hagel's other problem is that he's also a vocal and fairly mean spirited homophobe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/us/chuck-hagel-is-criticized-over-gay-rights-record.html?ref=politics&_r=0
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