Apparently the geniuses over at the Green Party campaign want to attack Jack Darin and the Sierra Club for endorsing Blagojevich. In their words:
Rich Whitney, the Green Party candidate for Illinois Governor, and Julie Samuels, the Green Party candidate for Lt. Governor, today responded to an open letter, written by Illinois Sierra Club Director Jack Darin, in which Darin praises and urges voters to support the same candidate that recently appointed Darin to serve on two taskforces, both designed to “assist in implementation” of that candidate’s very own energy plan.
The Governor’s office issued a press release on September 8, 2006, indicating that Darin had been appointed by the Governor for membership in the “Coal Gasification & Carbon Sequestration Working Group” and the “Clean Car and Energy Efficiency Working Group” along with representatives of organizations including the Office of Coal Development, ConocoPhillips, Eastman Chemical, Ford Motor Company, Z Frank Chevrolet, and various others.
So essentially because Jack and the Sierra Club are actually showing up to meetings that have the chance to actually improve things, they have a conflict of interest. These aren’t paid positions, these are positions on an adisory council. The implication of conflict of interest clearly suggests differently and it’s a load of crap.
The biggest failure of the Blagojevich administration if one reads the Illinois Environmental Council’s Midterm Report on him is the funding of programs and given it covered his first two years, even I’d give him a break on this. That said, he still hasn’t delivered adequate funding. Looking at his record, however, I’d say I completely understand the endorsement. He has a strong record on regulations and alternative energy comparatively and probably is the strongest Governor environmentally Illinois has had.
“That’s the old stereotype: tree-hugging, spotted-owl-loving Green Party. It doesn’t apply. We’re not that easy to pigeonhole,” Whitney told me in a lengthy and cordial phone interview.
As I’ve pointed out before, anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Spotted Owl understand that it’s importance isn’t that of one species, but being an indicator species that tells you how well the ecosystem is surviving. So to make fun of that being a big issue is a big slap in the face to environmentalists. It’s something that should be relatively well understood by hunters as well so it’s not a hard point to get across–if you want game left in an area, the indicator species needs to be thriving.
When we read the Whitney web site, light pollution gets greater coverage than feedlots or preserving ecosystems in parks. That’s telling. It’s also telling that they’d attack Jack for participating in a process to actually do something about environmental problems instead of just taking his ball and going home.
The fact that the Governor is willing to appoint the director of a major environmental group in the state to a policy committee is something I’m happy to see and another reason why Blagojevich earned the endorsement based on his good environmental record.