It is not often that record high petrol prices prove helpful to American politicians. But with prices now riding at more than $3 a gallon in many parts of the country, voters are listening ever more attentively to how their 2008 presidential contenders will tackle global warming...

Among the Democratic candidates, however, there is intensifying competition to be the most radical global warming candidate. Almost all have signed up to targets of reducing America's carbon emissions by between 60 and 80 per cent by 2050 – in line with what Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, and his colleagues in the western and north-eastern states have proclaimed.

Some, such as Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and former energy secretary in the Clinton administration, who is running fourth in the Democratic stakes behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, argue that those targets are not urgent enough.

"When John F. Kennedy challenged this country to reach the moon, he challenged us to get there in 10 years, not 20 or 30 or 40," he told the New America Foundation think-tank in Washington last week. "I am going to stake my claim to being the next president – the energy president – on the concept of a fast, comprehensive energy revolution..."

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