The Kaine administration has disassociated itself from Patrick Michaels, a University of Virginia environmental sciences professor and state climatologist. “Generally, it is safe to say that Pat Michaels doesn’t represent the governor’s opinion on global warming,” Delacey Skinner, Kaine’s director of communications, told the Charlottesville Daily Progress. “He doesn’t speak for the state. He doesn’t speak for the Governor.”
Michaels is known nationally as one of the more vocal skeptics of global-warming alarmism.
Presumably, Skinner’s statement means that Gov. Kaine embraces many or all of the global warming fears circulated in the environmental community. As I’ve explained in an earlier post, the tag “global warming” covers a series of related propositions, some of which are more controversial than others: that average global temperatures are warming, that the warming is caused by human impact on the environment, that rising temperatures will be disastrous for biological diversity and humankind, and that changes in the economies of industrialized nations is called for to slow the pace of warming.
(Update: I checked with Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall, who explained that Skinner’s comments cannot be construed as an explication of Gov. Kaine’s thinking on global warming. She was simply making it clear that, though designated the state climatologist, Michaels was not a gubernatorial appointee. Accordingly, I have revised some of the comments that follow.)
I would be interested to know Gov. Kaine’s views on global warming and the extent to which they inform his thinking about (a) state energy policy, and (b) transportation and land use. Questions:
Does Gov. Kaine accept the estimate that the vast majority of energy consumption in Virginia — to the tune of 80 percent (see Ed Risse’s estimate in “Soft Consumption Paths,” August 7, 2006) — is directly tied to the state’s energy-intensive transportation system and patterns of land use?
Does Gov. Kaine accept the proposition that to curtail the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, Virginia should embrace more energy-efficient transportation systems and land use patterns?
Will Gov. Kaine inject global-warming perspectives into the statewide energy study his administration is responsible for producing next year?
(For the record, while I think that the fears of global warming have been hyped shamelessly in some quarters, I would encourage the state to adopt energy-efficient transportation and land use strategies as a way to reduce Virginians’ dependence upon foreign oil, create more economic activity locally and reduce air and water pollution. If we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time, that’s a bonus.)
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