BG (Rick Klein): Kerrys mount campaign to help the environment

[MH1]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/03/12/kerrys_mount_campaign_to_help_the_environment/

Not a bad article. Please go read the whole thing.

Kerry said he and his wife have incorporated environmental lessons in their lives. They own three hybrid cars, have replaced most of the lights in their homes with efficient fluorescent bulbs, and now buy carbon credits for the fuel they burn in their cars and private plane, he said.

Yet Kerry said one of the book's central lessons is that major sacrifices aren't necessary.

"I didn't want it to be an angry book. I wanted it to be positive," he said. "You can keep your quality of life. You can do the things you do. We can just do them in a way that's carbon-neutral, and benefits the people around you."

Looking back at 2004, Heinz Kerry said she knows they both "poured our hearts and our souls out in terms of ideas" as Kerry ran for the White House.

Though the campaign fell short, she said she takes solace in the fact that they can still bring passion to a cause together.

"He didn't do badly, let's put it that way, but it wasn't enough, and you learn your lessons," she said. "Wherever we are, we are at a place and time where we can do something."

[TayTay]

1. And they ran a nice article about that visit to the Vets Center

with just the loveliest picture that is online at the website on this article.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/03/12/kerry_urges_more_funding_for_va_center/

Seriously, that is like one of the best pics the Glob has run ever. Something is up with them. I think they might have laid off the person in charge of snark in the last NYTimes ordered purge of the newsroom. Maybe they decided they could do without the person in charge of inserting depressing quotes into the middle of an otherwise positive article. I don't know if this is progress or not. Let me check the rules:

You know you're from Massachusetts if:

1.You think crosswalks are for wimps

2. You think if someone is nice to you that they either want something, or they are from out of town and lost

12. You believe using your turn signals gives away your plan to the enemy.

http://forums.invisionpower.com/lofiversion/index.php/t185244.html

Somewhere lurking between these three signs is the mysterious answer to why the Glob was being so nice today. I am deeply suspicious of them now. Nothing raises your internal 'watch it' system like someone being unaccountably nice to you. All of a sudden. For no dicernable reason. Spring Fever maybe? (It's definitely a turn signal, and they are being nice, and it is sort of a crosswalks, so I think something is up. )

[rox63]

2. Nice article! n/t

[beachmom]

3. Thanks for posting. This is a very good article and told me things

I didn't know. Interesting, too, because Kerry proposed the book soon after his electoral loss WELL BEFORE "An Inconvenient Truth" came out. I find it a fascinating coincidence that both opponents of Bush would come out of their defeats thinking about the environment. It goes to show how urgent this issue is that this has happened.

[TayTay]

4. It also shows how much the 2004 race meant

It meant that all those stories told had to find a place to live. That alone is a remarkable thing.

[MH1]

5. In another article (sorry I don't remember which one)

JK said that even though he talked about the environment at every opportunity, it didn't seem to resonate with most folks in 2004, and he found that frustrating.

That is a different side of the story than the people who claim he "never talked about the environment during the campaign." I know I have read some of his speeches and yes, he does always seem to bring it up.

It was one of the areas that made me like him more than the other candidates - I guess I saw that LCV endorsed him in the primary, even though I don't explicitly remember seeing it, I've been on their mailing list for years and usually at least skim what they send me.

It is a shame that it didn't get more traction in the campaign. But, that was part of *'s plan in invading Iraq and shilling the terror alerts and so forth - drown out all the realities that show him to be a miserable failure.

[karynnj]

7. It may be that Gore has elevated the environment as a voting issue

which is what Gore said he wanted to do in one of the Rolling Stone articles. But in 2004, as well as before and afterwards, the environment has never ranked high when people answer what issues they will vote on.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the recent polls on priorities. In spite of Gore's movie and his Oscar and the greater awareness, environment and global warming still are pretty low as issues. Only 7 people took it as the top issue and when you look at the relative importance on issues, it is near the bottom.

In the 2006 analysis it was Iraq and corruption.

This is all second guessing - Kerry did a great job mentioning energy and the environment in a way that was both serious and very hopeful. People saying that Gore should have made global warming a bigger issue ignore that he stressed the bad things that would happen and the solutions would seem to be to have less - this in the wake of the self obsessed 1990s. He would likely have done worse. In Kerry's case, just as it was not the econmomy, it was not the environment - he needed to convince people on the war on terror. I assume that if he should have changed anything, it would have been to have spoken earlier on the War on Terror and took more credit for the international money laundering legislation he wrote.

[wisteria]

6. Nice article, now I would like to see other such nice stories appearing in other newspapers. n/t