Most Towns Support Global Warming Resolution

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• NPR's Day To Day: New Hampshire Calls For Action on Warming

(I will open the town meeting for warrant articles 6 through 27, if you all rise while Ed Maloof leads us in the pledge of allegiance”) then under

Here in Boscawen, a town of about 39-hundred just outside the state capital, residents gathered in the local elementary school to vote on the budget and other town policies.
But Boscawen resident Charlie Niebling is hoping his neighbors will support a resolution that calls for Congress and President Bush to address the issue of climate change.
1017 3:31 I can’t honestly think of a more local issue particularly this winter than the issue of climate change, particularly with the non-winter we had

Neibling was one of hundreds of volunteer activists across New Hampshire who either convinced or petitioned town selectmen in 180 towns to bring the issue before voters.
The global warming resolutions, organized by a nonpartisan group called the Carbon Coalition, ask for the creation of a national research initiative to develop sustainable energy technologies.
Carbon Coalition Co-Chair and former Republican state house representative Ted Leach says their hope is to force presidential candidates visiting the state to take a stand on the issue.
15:56 when its raised in a candidates appearance we’re talking to two audiences, the 200 people in room, also to the 50 or 100 members of the national press corp who are standing around the edge of the room and let them report them back to people so the LA Times is saying, in NH they’re talking about global warming 16:15

Leach recounts how towns adopted a similar resolution about acid rain in 1983.
And he believes that effort brought the issue to the 1984 presidential race.
2:25 at that time they got it on 200 town warrants, passed it on 197, that made a very strong case for acid rain for all the presidential wannabe’s who were wandering into the state after that.

But some outspoken critics say the non-binding resolution is nothing more than a publicity stunt generated by environmental activists.
Charlie Arlinghouse is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a New Hampshire free market think tank.
1207 :21 I think resolutions like this are somewhat of a perversion of the purpose of town meeting, town meeting is there to govern town government, and this isn’t about town government, it’s about federal policy and as such it’s a distraction.

Arlinghouse says town meetings have increasingly been inundated with what he calls inane resolutions – including one that asked the President to bring troops home from Iraq or another that asked residents to agree that President Bush should be impeached.
Ted Leach says he’s heard critics contend that it’s not a local issue, but he isn’t buying it.
“It was one of the first things I ran into in Hancock a very good friend of mine said this isn’t a local issue really, I believe in global warming but it’s not local issues, I said wait a minute let me go over what you just said, you said global warming is real but it hasn’t gotten to Hancock, but everyway else in the world, he said well, if you put it that way I said that’s exactly the way I’m putting it.”

At Boscawen’s town meeting, some residents were hoping the resolution would spark debate – even those like Bruce Crawford, who says he doesn’t believe in global warming and sees no purpose in the resolution.
2:17 it’s not a local issue and its something that there isn’t much of anything that this town can do about it.

But here, like in most towns across the state, the resolution came up for a vote late in the evening, when most residents were ready to go home.
Article 26 on Boscawen’s list easily passed with no discussion.
(Nat sound) 1024 1:53

More than 75-percent of those towns voting on the resolution already passed it.
Only a handful rejected it.
And with such an overwhelming majority, supporters hope Presidential candidates will have to pay attention to the issue.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton in Concord.