The Post-Partisan Environmentalist?

Over at The Reality-Based Community, Steven Teles is discussing what he sees as Obama's secret weapon:

"I think that there is no question that Obama and the party need to go negative on McCain, in a much more cutting and substantive way than they have so far. But the nature of Obama's appeal, and simply who he is as a person, mean that it will be hard (and probably counter-productive) for him to do so directly. Obama's secret weapon is post-partisan partisanship.

The key rhetorical move in post-partisan partisanship is to say that we need to get beyond partisanship to do x, y and z, all of which are in fact partisan things. You attack the Republicans for being hyper-partisans who prevented x, y and z from being done--like universal health coverage..."

This got me to thinking: it's basically impossible for environmentalists to avoid being partisan in the U.S., at least at the federal level. In Sweden, there seems to be relatively broad agreement that something needs to be done about global warming. But in the U.S., a 2007 poll of Congressional insiders asked 72 Senators and Representatives, "Do you think that it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?" 95% of Democrats said yes. In contrast, only 13% of Republicans agreed. Thir. Teen. Percent.

These days, the only way to get our country to actually start solving the global warming problem is to make sure that the GOP is out of power and in the political wilderness. They can believe whatever they want, as long as they can't stop the actual solutions in Congress.