McCain on the Environment

This is the second post in a series on the Presidential candidates and the environment.  Part One on Obama was published earlier today, and tonight we take a look at McCain.

McCain’s Environmental Record

First, as Josh mentioned in his Obama Post, it should be noted that the League of Conservation Voters did give McCain a rating of 0% in 2007.  However, what Josh failed to mention was that McCain was absent from all 15 votes, which automatically gave him a 0%.  Like Obama, this could largely be due to the rigors of campaigning.  McCain’s lifetime score is 24%, and while not nearly as good as Obama’s lifetime score (or even yearly his records), we must take into account the depth of McCain’s record versus the depth of Obama’s record (insert old age McCain joke here).

Now, what does McCain’s environmental record look like since he first became a Senator in 1990?  He has a deep record, as mentioned above, but here are some highlights:

• Cosponsored two bills with Mo Udall. The first, enacted in 1964, added 1 million acres to the wilderness area established in his 1964 legislation. The second, enacted four years after his election to the Senate, set aside 1.4 million acres of Arizona desert wilderness.
• Wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined “Nature Is Not a Liberal Plot,” criticizing his fellow Republicans for their weak stance on the environment.  This was a bold move for a republican and contributes to his so-called ‘maverick’ status in the Senate.
• Drafted the Climate Stewardship Act cap-and-trade bill for carbon emissions and in 2003, it got 43 votes.  This was an enormous feat, considering that the Senate had just recently rejected the Kyoto Protocol 95-0.
• Featured on the cover of OnEarth magazine in 2004, under the headline “Meet Captain Planet.”

McCain does have some other not so great history too:

• Voted against increased EPA funding in 1996
• Supports offshore drilling
• Endorsed a gas tax holiday, which made virtually no economic or environmental sense.

Overall his record is seen as mixed, and could be better or worse, depending on what your hot button environmental issues are.  Ultimately, McCain needs to be given credit for taking an early stance on global warming as a republican and leading the cause in congress.  He also needs to deal with the part of his record that isn’t so environmentally popular.

McCain’s Campaign Stance on the Environment

McCain’s stance on climate change, and what we ought to be doing about it, can be summed up in his owned words.  The following is a quote from the December 12^th, 2007 Republican debates:

Suppose that climate change is not real, and all we do adopt green technologies, which our economy and our technology is perfectly capable of. Then all we’ve done is given our kids a cleaner world. But suppose they are wrong. Suppose they are wrong, and climate change is real, and we’ve done nothing. What kind of a planet are we going to pass on to the next generation of Americans? It’s real. We’ve got to address it. We can do it with technology, with cap-and- trade, with capitalist and free enterprise motivation. And I’m confident that we can pass on to our children and grandchildren a cleaner, better world.

What I find most interesting about this stance, is that it is essentially tackling climate change from a risk management perspective, which we have argued for in the past.  McCain leaves open the possibility that a hard lined approach to reducing emissions could potentially be fruitless, but also recognizes that we ought to do something about it either way.  This really is a bold stance for a republican to take, and as noted above, he was the first to do it, as a republican, in congress.

According to his website, this is what McCain proposes we do about climate change:

John McCain Proposes A Cap-And-Trade System That Would Set Limits On Greenhouse Gas Emissions While Encouraging The Development Of Low-Cost Compliance Options. A climate cap-and-trade mechanism would set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and allow entities to buy and sell rights to emit, similar to the successful acid rain trading program of the early 1990s. The key feature of this mechanism is that it allows the market to decide and encourage the lowest-cost compliance options.

The cap and trade system would be implemented and would move us towards his emissions targets:

• 2012: Return Emissions To 2005 Levels (18 Percent Above 1990 Levels)

• 2020: Return Emissions To 1990 Levels (15 Percent Below 2005 Levels)

• 2030: 22 Percent Below 1990 Levels (34 Percent Below 2005 Levels)

• 2050: 60 Percent Below 1990 Levels (66 Percent Below 2005 Levels)

McCain also proposes to take a portion of the proceeds from the permits auctioned off to support greener technologies:

Emissions Permits Will Eventually Be Auctioned To Support The Development Of Advanced Technologies. A portion of the process of these auctions will be used to support a diversified portfolio of research and commercialization challenges, ranging from carbon capture and sequestration, to nuclear power, to battery development. Funds will also be used to provide financial backing for a Green Innovation Financing and Transfer (GIFT) to facilitate commercialization.

It seems like McCain touts a bigger message than what he has actually pushed for in congress.  I often wonder if he is making climate change one of his big three issues in order to capture more of the independent vote, but he does have the reputation for being an outspoken republican leader on the environment.  It could prove difficult to tell how serious McCain is about the environment moving forward and how much of it is political talk.

Overall Assessment

McCain has been a catalyst for leading the charge in the fight against global warming in the Senate.  He doesn’t just show up and vote well; He makes things happen.  To his fault, he also has a record of showing up and voting poorly sometimes too.  Overall his record is mixed.  However, he deserves credit for being outspoken as a republican when his fellow conservatives weren’t paying attention.  Climate change is an issue that won’t go away, as is alternative energy (in fact, this could be the next big boom).  Judging from his past, and the fact that McCain will be a one term president, it would seem like a good strategy for him to actually follow through on what he says.

What will be interesting is to see how the Vice Presidential running mates stack up on the environment, and how they complement or detract from the front runner.  Look for more on that coming soon.

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