McCain on Climate Change

When I was talking to Jon Chait about John McCain I realized that I was a little unclear on the current status of McCain's climate change thinking. Brian Beutler lays out his evolution:

Jon rightly points to his position on climate change--indeed, in 2003, when McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced the Climate Stewardship Act, they were way ahead of the curve, and if the bill had passed then, it might well have been a sufficient regulatory solution to the problem. But the problem has grown worse and the measures needed to combat it more expansive, and as such, when the Democrats took over in 2007, they began discussing a whole host of new legislation, the weakest of which--sponsored by Lieberman and John Warner--has a lot of momentum behind it. But it doesn't have the support of McCain himself, who basically thinks the bill is too far reaching, except in that it doesn't contain a provision to back a dump truck full of money up to the front door of the nuclear energy industry. Today, his campaign says almost nothing about global warming at all. So I suppose he should get some plaudits for opening the climate change conversation up to other Republicans (like Olympia Snowe and John Warner and others). But he's not leading on the issue anymore, and it's pretty clear where he'd govern from as president.

I don't think it's a very good idea to lard up a climate change bill with subsidies to the nuclear industry (noting that any sensible system of carbon curbs would constitute a large de facto subsidy to nuclear power anyway, I'd like to see explicit subsidies limited to truly clean renewables). I wouldn't, however, be heartbroken to see an otherwise good climate bill wind up larded up with such subsidies on route to passage or as a means of building a broader political coalition. But to actually turn around and oppose a climate change bill due to insufficient lard seems totally unconscionable like old fashioned straight talk to me.

Comments

in 2003, when McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced the Climate Stewardship Act, they were way ahead of the curve, and if the bill had passed then, it might well have been a sufficient regulatory solution to the problem. But the problem has grown worse

Beutler is either misspeaking or simply ignorant here. It's not that global warming has suddenly gotten far more severe over the last four years, it's that it's become more politically acceptable on the center and the right to both acknowledge anthropogenic climate change and the steps that need to be taken to do something about it. The McCain-Lieberman bill of 2003 was an incredibly weak bill, weaker than anything else we're looking at right now - its goal was to cap 2010 carbon emissions at their 2000 level, an already unacceptably high rate - and no one could seriously think it would be a "sufficient regulatory solution" to the problem of global warming. All of which is to say that John McCain signed on to an incredibly weak bill in 2003 at a time when it was doomed to die in the Senate, and refuses to support a stronger, but still weak bill now.

Posted by Christmas | January 7, 2008 2:19 PM

I agree with Christmas that McCain's bill in 2003 was weak tea indeed, but what's puzzling is that although McCain doesn't seem ready to do much of anything about global warming, he talks about it all the time. For example, from Swampland today, he expands on the need to stay in Iraq by saying:

We'd stay there as long as needed, whether that's [exact quote here] "one hundred years, one thousand years, ten thousand years or until the earth collapses under global climate change.”

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/01/mccain_stays_in_iraq.html

Is this all a cynical ploy to encourage nuclear energy? I don't think so -- I think McCain genuinely is concerned (as any senator from the state of perpetual drought should be).

My guess is that he hopes to build a consensus first, then get to solutions later. But maybe I'm giving him too much credit.

Posted by Kit Stolz | January 7, 2008 2:57 PM

I don't think that any of the GOP candidates would deliver a truly tranformative climate/energy policy, but of their field, I believe both Huckabee and McCain would work with a Democratic Congress to get something done. Huckabee because of his "stewards of the Earth" component of his faith, and McCain because he has in fact been talking about the issue for a long time (it's not surprising that he doesn't talk about it too much to the GOP base).

Of course, the best scenario is to have a true progressive leading the charge.

Posted by stinky mcgee | January 7, 2008 3:57 PM

As stinky hints at, it is entirely possible McCain doesn't talk about global warming simply because it's the Republican nomination he's trying to win. The last thing he wants at this point is negative Republican press, so he focuses on other issues he scores points with. When he wins the nomination (yes, when---that's my bet) and moves to the general election, we're going to hear a lot more about it as he tries to attract voters outside the Republican tent.

Posted by mitch | January 7, 2008 4:20 PM

The problem with McCain's bill and others like it is that they are not based on economic or energy realities. The only way to meet the targets that would be set for the next two decades is suppression of fossil energy use. There are no cost competitive alternatives on the horizon that can be installed to produce electricity and substitute for petroleum based fuels in the large quantities that would be needed.
If the Congress is really serious about reducing emissions from their current level, a carbon tax would be far more effective and would avoid a host of problems associated with cap and trade.

Posted by william o'keefe | January 8, 2008 8:42 AM