More Than a Fleeting Mention?

Trey Smith

On Sunday, in Don't Mention It, I noted that the words global warming or climate change had not been referred to by either candidate in the three televised presidential debates. Obviously, this type of omission really ticked off Mother Nature! To show her displeasure, we got Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy.

Now that global warming/climate change has thrust itself before the public consciousness, some people are hopeful that the issue worms its way into the last few days of the presidential campaign.

It just might do that, but the real question is: Will it be more than a fleeting mention?

Political candidates -- particularly the presidential variety -- talk up a storm about a variety of issues.  If an issue thrusts itself into the campaign, presidential wannabes are more than happy to tell voters how they would tackle it, if elected.  They will pound the podium and make all sorts of promises and pledges.  More often than not, it's nothing more than bluster.

Talk is cheap; action is what counts.  The chief problem we face is that the federal government has been painfully short of the latter.

Remember the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010?  We heard a lot of talk from the President and Congress.  We were going to make sure that there were better safeguards so a calamity like that will never happen again.  It sounds good, but once the glare of the cameras faded away, it turned out to be nothing more than talk.

Despite the fact that NO NEW safeguards are in place, "Drilling permit approvals are back to pre-Deepwater Horizon levels, and the future holds  deeper wells held by a handful of big companies, according to an outlook on drilling in the Gulf from Quest Offshore, Texas-based deepwater oil and gas analysis and marketing group."

So, while global warming/climate change may make for good political fodder for the next week or so, it doesn't amount to much of anything IF the winning candidate commits to no substantive actions to make a difference.  All it will become is another rhetorical sound bite in a sea of similar sound bites.