McCain's astonishing doubletalk on climate in the Florida GOP debate -- denying that a cap and trade system is a mandate -- made me start rethinking what a McCain presidency would mean for the fight to prevent catastrophic global warming. The more I researched McCain's views, the more I talked to others, the more I felt forced to change my previous view.
Salon has just published my long analysis, which concludes that while he would be vastly superior to Bush on climate ...
... a President McCain would not be the climate leader that America and the world requires. He is a conservative who happens to be on the only intellectually defensible side of the climate change debate. But he is still a conservative, and the vast majority of the solutions to global warming are progressive in nature -- they require strong government action, including major federal efforts to spur clean technology.
Of course, as I argue in my book, it is precisely because they know that the solutions to global warming are mostly progressive in nature that most conservatives are so close-minded on the subject. My basic argument is:
As increasingly desperate climate scientists have been telling us, the effects of global warming are occurring faster than anyone had thought possible.
The next president must make reducing GHG emissions a central focus of his or her administration if we want to avoid the worst impacts of global warming: catastrophic sea level rise, widespread drought and desertification, and loss of up to 70 percent of all species.
While McCain may understand the scale of the climate problem, he does not appear to understand the scale of the solution. He understands the country needs to put in place a mandatory cap on GHG emissions and a trading system to energize American innovation. But in a recent Republican debate, he denied that a cap and trade system is a mandate, even though it would arguably be the most far-reaching government mandate ever legislated.
Moreover, like most conservatives, he doesn't understand or accept the critical role government must play to make that system succeed. Besides initiating a cap-and-trade system, the next president must:
1. Appoint judges who won't gut climate change efforts.
2. Appoint leaders and staff of key federal agencies who take climate change seriously and believe in the necessary solutions.
3. Embrace an aggressive and broad-based technology deployment strategy to keep the cost of the cap and trade system as low as possible.
4. Lead a change in utility regulations to encourage, rather than discourage, energy efficiency and clean energy.
5. Offer strong public advocacy to reverse the years of muzzling and misinformation of the Bush administration.
As I explain in the piece, McCain is unlikely to do any one of those things, let alone all of them.
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Comments
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Sean Casten Posted 3:52 am
08 Feb 2008
I agree with the urgency to lower GHG emissions, but not that the solutions are uniquely progressive. Indeed, framing it as if there is only one political philosophy that fits is downright dangerous, since we need all oars rowing on this one.
I could very easily make the case that this is a libertarian / fiscal conservative issue. Remove subsidies to fossil fuel extraction & utilization. Remove subsidies to utility inefficiency. Put prices on externalities - including carbon - so that capital can be efficiently allocated. Structure tradeable emissions permits to be fiscally neutral, such that the payments to the clean folks are exactly offset by payments from the dirty folks, in the name of economic protection. (E.g., wealth redistribution, not wealth reduction.)
Those of a progressive political persuasion may think this approach is flawed, to the extent that they believe that top-down gov't regulation is more efficient than markets. But that doesn't mean that they would disagree on the goal. And what we really need right now are folks pushing towards the goal as fast as we can, rather than arguing over the path. The progressive vs. conservative framing is at core, one of tactics. Reducing GHG emissions is non-partisan, and strategic.
I don't frankly have an opinion as to whether McCain specifically would take this approach or not - but don't see any reason why the left has a natural monopoly on the issue.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:02 am
08 Feb 2008
You publish a thought piece in "Salon" (how hard is that these days).
Then you quote yourself in a Grist post.
And you repeat it in your book (how many copies sold)?
Is this helping?
jabailo.johnmccain.com
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David Roberts Posted 4:12 am
08 Feb 2008
grist.org
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Charles Barton Posted 4:18 am
08 Feb 2008
Charles Barton
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GRLCowan Posted 4:58 am
08 Feb 2008
Before taxes, except royalties. The taxes on natural gas can hardly be less than five times the total revenue on uranium. So someone whose best job ever was a civil service one might understandably, although not excusably, proceed as if the way to defeat global warming is to replace coal with natural gas, cutting carbon emissions in half, unless perhaps several billion Asians find similar amounts of gas per person and start burning it.
An unpleasant graphic.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
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GRLCowan Posted 5:13 am
08 Feb 2008
That way, they'll put the environment and public health ahead of maximizing the sales of the most expensive possible variety of buried burnable carbon, and the unpleasant graphic's 2020 update will include solid dark blue at its right margin. That probably can't be prevented no matter what happens, but if it happens a few years earlier, a few innocents will be spared gas pipeline blasts, etcetera.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:04 am
08 Feb 2008
And likely you aren't accounting for the "lifecycle cost" of that nuclear fuel.
(Anything looks better when you don't count your liabilities)
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Tasermons Partner Posted 8:06 am
08 Feb 2008
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Ron Steenblik Posted 6:45 pm
09 Feb 2008
These are only my personal opinions.
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