CGI Call for Integrated Solutions II: Perspectives from Obama and McCain (or NOT)

At this morning’s opening plenary, members of the CGI searched for open seats while the the press groaned about the lack of space, sat on the floor, weaseled their way onto members-only tables and the national press complained about the lack of exclusive press pools just for their reporters and cameras. Needless to say, there was a lot of nervous energy in the room, waiting to hear form presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama provides the opening and closing remarks to a panel on Integrated Solution to water, food and energy crises. Or maybe just to hear them talk. But I figured that with all the commotion surrounding their appearance here, I would be remiss not to cover their remarks on the Ladder, despite (sadly) the lack of any direct comment on asset building.

Perhaps to be expected, McCain’s opening remarks for the session actually only focused remotely on the environmental issues of the session and instead addressed the financial crisis and his decision to suspend his campaign to address them. He did talk about the need for a greater supply of oil and for clean burning coal (apparently he isn’t aware of the anti-oil, anti-carbon sentiment expressed throughout the CGI, particularly from Clinton and Gore, who yesterday called the phrase “clean-burning oil” a patent lie). Energy issues aside, McCain did pledge to fight malaria, improve child and maternal health, improve food security, reforming foreign aid, and especially, freeing trade (although this issue has been all but ignored at this conference). Those are many good causes, but I didn’t get a sense of the “integrated approach” he would take to achieve them, likely because he didn’t have time to articulate it after spending most of his 15 minutes advocating the his position on the Wall Street Bailout Bill.

Obama’s closing remarks, on the other hand (and perhaps also to be expected), focused much more on the specifics of his “integrated solution” to global issues. Indeed, in the spirit of CGI, he made very specific commitments in the areas of climate change (incentives for energy investment), poverty (bottom up development through aid reform), education (passing the Education for All Act) and health (malaria nets), stating, “prosperity cannot be sustained if it shuts people out.” But his integrated solution did not just call for working toward all of these goals simultaneously, but also for national and global cooperation and action to do so. In his words, “the world is intertwined and our destinies are shared” and the global challenges of climate change, disease, extremism and poverty “threaten our common humanity.”

Obama took time for politicking as well, stating that it’s “outrageous that taxpayers bear the burden of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street, but we must do something. …American people deserve to hear from the candidates – times are too serious to put campaigns on hold.” And he also laid out his position on what needs to be included in the Bailout Bill, a quasi-déjà vu of McCain’s own schpeel 1 hour earlier. The biggest difference perhaps was that, in this crowd, Obama’s was received with cheers and ovation as opposed to polite applaud.