The Wind is At Our Backs!

Conservation issues may not be as high on voters minds as the war in Iraq or the economy, but it's incredibly encouraging to see the extent to which candidates from both parties are beginning to speak out about confronting global warming and pushing for a cleaner, safer, cheaper energy policy that will end our addiction to oil. In Ohio Senate Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown talks about making that state the Silicon Valley or energy alternatives while his opponent, incumbent Senator Mike DeWine, touts his record opposing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In another industrial coal state Pennsylvania incumbent Governor Ed Rendell has made renewable energy a major part of his campaign for re-election. Wind energy entrepreneur Jerry McNerney, a Democrat, is running against House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo on a plank of making California's San Joaquin County a hub for alternative energy through federal research and development incentives. In Rhode Island, incumbent Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee has trumpeted his bipartisan work to seek binding limits on carbon emissions from power plants.

How are conservation issues playing in the races in your state? Has the windmill symbolically replaced the drilling rig in the debate about our energy future? Please let us know.

- Adam Kolton