Obama and Romney Have One More Chance to End Climate Silence

onOct 21, 2012 @ 05:00 PDT

It’s almost like President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney have already forgotten that this summer Americans experienced some of the most severe droughts in history and massive wildfires.

Yet here we are with only one Presidential debate to go and not once has either candidate uttered the words “climate change” in the two previous national debates. It doesn’t help that neither debate moderator Jim Lehrer or Candy Crowley chose to pose a question about climate change.

Even if one of the debate moderators did ask a question about climate change it would probably be the perennial favorite and completely idiotic question: “Do you believe in global warming?” – as if scientific conclusions, like the theory of gravity, are something we have to believe in for them to actually be real.

Friends of the Earth and Forecast the Facts are running a Climate Silence campaign urging Obama and Romney to speak up on climate change issues in this election, at the least, in the final debate happening tomorrow night.

You can even automatically load a fancy little icon to your Facebook or Twitter profile to show your support and help spread the word online.

So join in. It’s so completely ridiculous that we are facing a global issue that threatens our food sources, our water and the air we breathe and neither US presidential candidate has said anything substantial about it!

Send a message and tell Obama and Romney to grow up, be leaders and end the climate silence.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.