10/2/08

On a democratic note...

(Mind you, I wrote democratic, not Democratic. Let's Not Get Into That Sort of Thing!)

Two things:
1. Check out this site. On it you can submit your own ideas for what you want the next president to do on day one in the White House. Here's an interesting one: would make the White House look kind of like Ecohouse with our garden patch outside. They're got nine categories of issues for your ideas, including climate and energy. You can also rate other users' ideas without having to sign up with the site.

2. The vice presidential debates are tonight! It is difficult to be unbiased about the running mates' stances on the environment given the information that's out there. Still, I feel comfortable linking to Biden's environmental record versus Palin's unadulterated standpoints because clearly, the environment is not the only issue that matters in the election.* Also, these are the running mates, not the candidates themselves. Finally, shouldn't we be talking about this? Environmental issues usually gain support from more Democrats and liberals than Republicans and conservatives, but when one considers the diversity of individual voters rather than parties and ideologies, plus the fact that government is supposed to be for the people, and that people along with their parties and ideologies change... one may conclude that this is not a partisan issue except to those who enjoy partisanship. And I don't, which is good, because if I did my house would be a war zone.

Speaking of nonpartisan issues, my apartment mate, Hanna, who is part of the on-campus group Maryland Students for Clean Energy, is working on a campaign called Power Vote. This campaign gets young voters to sign a pledge saying they will vote for the most environmentally savvy candidate, whoever they judge that candidate to be. Thanks to their hard work, as of yesterday the University of Maryland at College Park is in third place for the total number of pledges submitted!

*I say "unadulterated" because it's hard to come across articles about Palin's environmental standpoints that don't contain editorial words such as "abysmal" and even "terrorist" - really, "terrorist", on the first Google result. Easy now, blogosphere!

No comments: