GOP tackles climate change: Three former Campbell advisers work to slow global warming

September 4, 2006, The State
by Sammy Fretwell

When he hung up the phone at his Washington office one day last year, Tucker Eskew wondered about the conversation he had just completed.

The former spokesman for Gov. Carroll Campbell, a Republican, had been asked to help an environmental group fight against global warming, long-considered a Democratic cause championed by the likes of former Vice President Al Gore.

“That was certainly a new and different prospect for my business,” said Eskew, now a political strategist and consultant. “But I went from, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ to ‘I’ve got to think about this.’”

Today, Eskew is one of three former Campbell advisers hired by Environmental Defense to map strategy for stemming global warming.

Whit Ayres, a former senior policy adviser to Campbell, and one-time Campbell campaign organizer Tony Denny are involved in polling and grass-roots work for Environmental Defense.

None classifies himself as an environmentalist, but each said the organization’s approach is appealing.

The 39-year-old group favors involving business and industry in efforts to fight global warming, instead of relying only on government regulation. Group officials say the United States can develop an economy that can help solve the climate-change crisis.

“We went to work with a measure of skepticism, but came out believing they were really interested in getting something done,” Ayres said. “This was not your typical left-wing environmental group running around screaming ‘the sky is falling.’ It is a group of fairly pragmatic people.”

Environmental Defense would not divulge how much it is paying Eskew, Ayres and Denny.

But Steve Cochran, who directs the national climate campaign for Environmental Defense, said the nonprofit organization needed their help. It hired the Republican trio to persuade conservative GOP members that global warming is a threat that can’t be ignored.

“We decided we needed to be talking with people who didn’t already agree with us,” Cochran said. “A lot of the people did agree with us, but there were not enough of them.”

Eskew, Ayres and Denny worked under Campbell, whom many credit with reviving the state Republican Party in the late 1980s. Today, South Carolina is solidly a GOP state.

Campbell, who died last year, brought thousands of high-paying jobs to the state through his emphasis on economic development. But conservation groups claimed he didn’t focus enough on environmental protection.

Bob Wislinski, a Columbia Democrat working with Denny on climate change issues in South Carolina, said Eskew, Ayres and Denny are showing that global warming concerns cross party boundaries. He also noted that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has become a leader in the climate change debate.

“They are conservative and they are Republican, but they are for doing something about climate change,” he said.

Dick Harpootlian, a former state Democratic Party chairman, said South Carolina Republicans should have embraced the need to fight global warming long ago. He said the biggest obstacle today is getting President Bush to do more to fight global warming.

Environmental Defense is a nonpartisan conservation group with more than 250 employees headquartered in New York. It works to protect endangered species and sea life in addition to its efforts to stop global warming.

Formed in 1967 by scientists worried about the pesticide DDT, the group today claims 400,000 members nationally.

Among those is Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. She has served as a trustee with the group.

Environmental Defense is more conservative than other environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council, said James Dellinger, who tracks nonprofit environmental groups for the Capital Research Center in Washington.

Eskew, Ayres and Denny said there’s little doubt that the Earth’s climate is changing. Many scientists say gases from burning fossil fuels are being trapped in the atmosphere, which heats the Earth’s surface.

Melting glaciers are contributing to sea-level rise that could swamp the South Carolina coast in the next several centuries. The warmer climate also is believed to have kept certain species of ducks and geese from migrating south during the winter, frustrating hunters.

“We are within a few decades of irreversible problems” unless the nation can figure ways to stop the warming, Eskew said.

GOP AT WORK

Since Environmental Defense hired the three Republican consultants:

• Eskew, 45, has helped formulate the group’s national campaign and provided advice on how issues would play in the South. Eskew, who also worked for the Bush administration, has focused on ways to persuade conservatives and Republicans.

• Ayres, 56, has conducted opinion polls and held meetings with residents about climate change. Those efforts included work last year in South Carolina with conservatives.

• Denny, 45, a former executive director of the state GOP, is a partner with Wislinski in the Carolina Climate Network. The network is an Environmental Defense-backed group launched to educate South Carolina residents about global warming.

The climate network, which has recruited state environmental groups to join, has established a Web site, developed advertising brochures and helped generate at least a half-dozen news stories about climate change. The network, through Denny’s efforts, has held behind-the-scenes meetings with key GOP officials in the Palmetto State about global warming.

Last month, the network brought Environmental Defense climate expert Mark MacLeod to Columbia for a state-sponsored air pollution conference. MacLeod spoke last winter at a S.C. Wildlife Federation event.

Nationally, Environmental Defense has targeted about 25 states, including South Carolina, to get the message out about global warming.

In some states, the group has lobbied for new legislation, such as the greenhouse gas limits passed recently in California.

In South Carolina and Arkansas, Environmental Defense has taken a more educational tone in hopes of eventually influencing national and state policy.

The kind of Republican support Eskew, Ayres and Denny can deliver is vital to change attitudes, and ultimately national policy, Cochran said.

“We’re trying to seed the process as much as possible,” he said.