League of Conservation voters ratings and profiles

[ecdab]

For those that are interested; the League of Conservation voters has released environmental ratings (for those candidates with a voting record that they track) and profiles (for candidates that responded to their questions) for the '08 Presidential candidates.

http://presidentialprofiles2008.org/

Environmental ratings are as follows:

Obama - 96
Kucinich - 92
Clinton - 90
Biden - 84
Richardson -82
Dodd - 77
Edwards - 59
Paul - 30
McCain - 26
Brownback - 14
Thompson - 12
Tancredo -11
Hunter - 9

The other candidates are unrated at present.

[rusty quoin]

1. Edward's rating suprised me.

[ecdab]

5. The main reasons John Edwards scores so poorly

are his 2003 ans 2004 voting records. The LCV counts failing to vote on an issue as a negative, and Edwards did not show up to vote very often in '03 and '04 (in part due to his campaigning those years, though it should be noted that John Kerry did a better job of showing up to vote on key environmental issues than John Edwards did in '03 and '04.)

http://www.lcv.org/images/client/pdfs/2004_lcv_scorecard.pdf 2004 scorecard

http://www.lcv.org/images/client/pdfs/2003lcvsc_final.pdf 2003 scorecard

In fairness to John Edwards, when he did show up to vote he did OK by the environment for the most part.

[karynnj]

6. From the 2003 score card, you can see that

Edwards was at 68% for the 107th Congress - this was before he was running for President. His score included bad votes. He did not have strength on the environment when he ran in 2004 - and has no actual accomplishments in that area - Kerry (who is not running) was an environmentalist - and with Senators Wirth and Heinz, were Gore allies in the Senate on global warming according to Earth in the balance. Kerry had the highest lifetime record of 96% over more than 2 decades.

[Adelante]

8. Edwards benefits greatly from association with Kerry

He has a platform he ran on that was environmentally positive because of Kerry.

[karynnj]

9. True -

It was 100% Kerry's though. Kerry, when asked on the TMOE book tours, has said that no one has both the record and the vision that he would like to see of those running. (I took that to be a only slightly subtle call to Gore, because you can't "grow" a record overnight.)

[Adelante]

7. Edwards had a poor environmental record

He voted against controls on mountain-top removal mining. He voted for nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, against fuel-efficiency standards for pickup trucks, favored industrial farm subsidies, and was against restricting pesticide use in public parks. In addition, he may have missed several votes as he started his first run for president halfway through his senate term.

However, he made something of a turnaround when he ran in 2004 and the environmental community seemed to have let bygones be bygones, especially after he joined Kerry's ticket. Currently, he is under criticism for his coal plan, but that doesn't make him any different than the other top two candidates. He's buying something like ten times more in carbon offsets than say Clinton, which some people like to see as a good thing and others do not. Aside from his personal life choices bringing criticism, that's about it, I think.

I don't see he has more of a problem at this time than the other candidates, though I think when it comes to environmental love, he will always have his critics somewhere.

[illinoisprogressive]

2. Very cool. I know he has a good record on the environment.

[ecdab]

3. Many people don't know

that Obama has an excellent track record on the environment. He may not be Al Gore, but of the people running for President (unlike Al Gore, which is a shame), he is perhaps the best. In fairness to Senator Clinton, she has done fairly well also; as has Kucinich.

[Mass]

4. This is a great record, but remember it is only 2 years

I am impressed that Kucinich and Biden has kept such a record during all these years.

As for Edwards, his score is the combination of a so so record and many votes missed because he was campaigning in 2003 and 2004, which lowered his notes for these years, and that have a high impact on his longlife record because he was only senator for 6 years.

Interesting too that even McCain, with supposedly a great record on these issues, has a lowest rating than any Democrats.