U.S. campaign spurs bid to solve climate change

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After just two early contests in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, some environmental groups are already declaring a winner: the issue of climate change.

"Four candidates, two states, one winner," was how the League of Conservation Voters put it after Tuesday's New Hampshire primary victories for Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain and Iowa caucus wins for Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama.

"The true frontrunner in the 2008 presidential campaign so far is the issue of global warming: all four winning candidates to date support capping greenhouse gas emissions and solving the global warming crisis," the non-partisan environmental group said online at www.lcv.org.

This is a change from the current administration, which has kept the United States alone among the major industrialized countries for its opposition to mandatory limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that spurs climate change.

Senator McCain of Arizona is the sponsor of one of the first bills to curb climate-warming pollution. Senator Clinton of New York is a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which managed last month to approve a new carbon-capping bill -- the first time this has ever happened.

Senator Obama of Illinois has said his first priority to combat global warming if he is elected would be to enact a carbon cap that would cut U.S. emissions by 80 percent.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, supports a cap-and-trade approach to fight global warming but has not been specific about how that might work in his administration.

An ordained Baptist minister, Huckabee has said that whatever the cause of climate change, humans are responsible for cleaning it up: "I believe that even our responsibility to God means that we have to be good stewards of this Earth."