Newsweek has published a multi-part project called Secrets of the 2008 Campaign, where some very interesting behind the scenes tidbits are being made public. One particular comment about global warming  from Barack Obama caught my eye, because it showed me that he not only gets it (which I already knew), but that he is human. When he was preparing a televised debate during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying:

“I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

I couldn’t agree more. While important, changing your ‘f—ing light bulbs’ to the more energy efficient compact fluorescent ones is not going to solve global warming/climate change. Personal choice is part of what got us into this problem and collective action is what has to get us out.

On Wednesday night, Al Gore sat down with Jessy Tolkan, Executive Director for Energy Action Coalition and Power Vote for a webcast to raise awareness and get people to pledge that they will make “clean, just energy” a priority in the upcoming election. Watch it (30 mins.):

When asked about climate change at the vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin said, “I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?”

Generally speaking, if we don’t know what the cause of a given problem is, but we know there is indeed a problem, how do we devise a strategy capable of adequately addressing it? Or, in the words of Gov. Palin, “…how are we going to get there to positively affect the impact” (whatever that means).

>>More on the vice-presidential debate at Red, Green, and Blue

In The much-ballyhooed vice-presidential debate, the issue of climate change received a bit of attention, but neither candidate was really pushed to develop their statements much beyond their original answers (Biden on his recent comment in a rope-line that the Obama-Biden ticket didn’t support clean coal and Palin on her waffling position on the causes of climate change). But the format didn’t really allow for deeper exploration either. >>Read the rest of this story at Red, Green, and Blue

Image credit: Mike Licht/NotionsCapital.com via flickr under a Creaive Commons License

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Got it so far? Now here’s the good part. [Read more]