a semi-pleasant surprise

More Campaignicity -- Huckabee: God wants us to fight global warming

This Salon.com article was a bit of a refreshing take on environmentalism from presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Unfortunately as it points out, Huckabee is "light on specifics," and it is hard to see how, realistically, energy companies (and the general public) will somehow straighten up their collective attitudes toward oil dependence and consumerism without some sort of specific regulations -- although I do also appreciate the need to avoid hyper-regulation of private citizens, our track record as a country isn't showing itself to be too hot in the personal responsibility category, especially in the area of the environment. One other major flaw in Huckabee's stance is his support of corn-based fuels. Although he does agree that there should be some transition away to other biomass-based fuels, he still sees the need for corn to play a part in future fuel development. However, from what I've read and heard so far, corn-based ethanol is not really worth the effort as far as reducing emissions due to its production processes, and the use of corn for fuel could inflate corn prices (and may be starting to already). That may be good for US farmers, as Huckabee mentions, but it could be devastating for food needs in third-world countries, many of which have corn as as a staple crop. Check out Study Says Ethanol Pollution Could Rival Gas and Would More Biofuel Use Threaten Food Supplies? from NPR.

More than anything, however, I do appreciate that Huckabee's willing to stand on our responsibility as Christians to care for the environment. I'm not totally up on how other candidates are posing this value, so this is not some sort of post casting support on a particular campaign. I am still undecided, friends, and really, I'm not thinking at the moment that ultimately Huckabee's going to make the nomination phase, out of pure speculation.

Just something that got me thinking today, and thought I'd share.