Last week, Campus Progress and the Center for American Progress hosted another installation of the series “Conversations with Daschle,” featuring a dialogue between former Senator Tom Daschle, and former Governor of New Jersey and EPA administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, held at the Georgetown University GPPI Student Lounge.

In addition to free pizza and drinks, guests were treated to a serious and comprehensive discussion on environmental policy. Although Whitman and Daschle are from opposite sides of the aisle, both agreed that climate change should no longer be treated as a politicized idea with disputed science, but as an objective reality.

While Senator Daschle was optimistic about the potential legislative efforts in Congress to ease human impact on climate change, Ms. Whitman was similarly pleased but admitted that she was cautious about some of the more “bold” proposals that have recently been made. Ms. Whitman maintained a strong support for a cap-and-trade system as a realistic solution, citing its success with respect to non-greenhouse gases and reiterating the need for businesses to have positive incentives in order to enact real progress. Approaches based solely on broad regulation, such as caps on carbon output, go too far and are not likely to be adopted, Ms. Whitman offered.

Both agreed that the legislative freedom provided in state governments have allowed states to serve as apt laboratories for the possible directions for environmental policy, with Governor Schwarzenegger’s California being the most obvious example. Both also fielded questions from the audience, covering topics ranging from what college students can do to make their campus green, to how to make being environmentally conscious "sexy." 

This was the seventh in the series of “Conversations with Daschle,” which features the former Senate Majority Leader casually discussing a certain subject with a different prominent politician or D.C. personality.