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Is global warming a political issue? Yes. Should it be? That's a subject of debate.
First, the term "global warming" is itself a matter of debate. Some argue the term "climate change" is more appropriate because global cooling could also be a cause of climate change and because global warming is a politically loaded term. Scientists on both sides of the debate are opposed to the use of global warming and of it becoming the subject of political debate.
Chris, an astronomer at Diffraction Spikes argues:
By "balancing" debates on science it gives people the impression that we can legislate science. Congress can vote to deny global warming or evolution, but that doesn't make it so. So by finding and giving a platform to some random person with scientific credentials who claims that global warming is not human caused, it gives the false impression that the evidence isn't as strong as it is.
So as much as some folks would like to treat climate change as a political issue, it is not one and should not be treated as one.
And as scientific understanding of climate change is evolving, perhaps it might be best for politicians to hold off on attempts to legislate the issue. Recently, as reported in the Houston Chronicle:
One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand.
The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.
If this is now the case then it would be premature perhaps for legislators to require insurance companies to cover homeowners in coastal areas which are thought to be in danger of being underwater in the not too distant future. Former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani made rising and disappearing homeowners insurance premiums a centerpiece of his last stand campaign in hurricane prone Florida earlier this year.
Katie Fehlinger, of AccuWeather.com and host of "Headline Earth" a web-based television series billed as "the first show that takes unbiased look at both sides of climate change debate," interviews former Democratic congressman Dick Ottinger who talks about the home insurance issue as well as other tricky climate change related issues such as NIMBY opposition to windmills limiting the growth of wind power.
On KQED, the San Francisco NPR station, Michael Krasny interviewed Adam Werbach, former president of the Sierra Club and current sustainability consultant. Werbach has found that corporations are increasingly open to enacting programs to address global warming than is the U.S. government and consequently we can probably effect more change at this point by using our power as consumers than as citizens.
The political debate is shifting as well. Leading voices in the climate science debate argue both that there needs to be a focus on market-based solutions but that government policy and spending needs to support the development of that marketplace.
“There is no question about whether technological innovation is necessary — it is,” said the authors, Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado; Tom Wigley, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Christopher Green, an economist at McGill University. “The question is, to what degree should policy focus directly on motivating such innovation?”
The next U.S. president will have an opportunity to substantially influence the political approach to global warming. Given that unlike our current president for much of his administration, the three leading contenders for the White House all view global warming as a substantial threat to the planet and promise to give greater prominence to addressing the issue in their administration. Some believe that each of the three candidates would move to ratify the Kyoto treaty. Others, however, view the candidates as more cautious and don't expect substantial change from current approaches and policies. Lorrie Goldstein writes in the Edmonton Sun:
Problem is, when you look at what Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are actually saying about Kyoto and its successor treaty
