Fiorina’s Flippant Climate Change Attack

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is well-positioned to make a real play for the Senate seat of Barbara Boxer in California this fall. Fiorina emerged victorious from a spirited primary by a wide margin and her personal wealth ensures that her campaign will not lack money. Her real-world business background – controversial though it may be – is a potentially strong selling point for voters given the economic recession. Fiorina is also well-informed, eloquent, and a dynamic campaigner. Nevertheless, she did her campaign and the voters of California an enormous disservice with her closing advertisement of the primary season due to its absurd factual reductions. “One of the very important national security issues we face, frankly, is climate change,” the ad shows Boxer opining in 2007. “Terrorism kills,” Fiorina declares in response, “and Barbara Boxer’s worried about the weather.”

First of all, equating climate change with the weather is childish in its ignorance. Fortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency has a helpful kids’ site that enunciates the difference. “Weather,” the site notes, “describes whatever is happening outdoors in a given place at a given time. Weather is what happens from minute to minute.” In contrast, “Climate is the long-term average of a region’s weather events lumped together…Climate describes the total of all weather occurring over a period of years in a given place.” The two phenomena thus differ greatly in both scale and scope.

Of course, Boxer did not explicitly say that climate change is a more important national security issue than terrorism, only implying that it is one important issue among others. In any case, a strong case can be made for her “worries” nonetheless. To be sure, disagreement persists over the science of climate change. But that did not stop the Central Intelligence Agency from establishing a Center on Climate Change and National Security late last year and observing that “Its charter is not the science of climate change, but the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.” Furthermore, the Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review 2010 stated that “climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters” and continuing effects will have “significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and further weakening of fragile governments.” “While climate change alone does not cause conflict,” the Review concluded, “it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.”

Nor should national security concerns over climate change be considered a liberal stalking horse. In 2008, Bush era-National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar testified that climate change has the potential to “aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions…The conditions exacerbated by the effects of climate change could increase the pool of potential recruits into terrorist activity.” That same year, Fiorina herself said, “I think there is growing consensus that the issues of climate change and energy independence are inextricably linked” and even expressed support for a cap-and-trade program to help alleviate climate change.

The fact is the people of California are far more intelligent than the ad in question might assume. When asked “How serious of a threat is global warming to the economy and quality of life for California’s future?” in a July 2009 poll, 47% of the participants responded “very serious,” with an additional 27% responding “somewhat serious.” Furthermore, the fact is that Fiorina is also far more intelligent than indicated by the ad. Boxer is an aloof, overly-ideological senator that has long had persistently lukewarm approval ratings. Fiorina does not need to stoop to cheap political shots to beat her. And most importantly, Californians deserve a far more relevant debate on the issues.