For you "A Team" of climate change analysis, you should always rely on Grist's Dave Roberts rather than me. His conclusion about McCain's proposal is that "it's better than expected, somewhat short of Lieberman-Warner, and far short of what Obama has proposed." On climate, interestingly, there's a clear choice between the two candidates and both candidates would be substantially better than Bush. Which shows you, I guess, how terrible Bush has been.
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Better McCain on Climate Analysis
12 May 2008 01:05 pm
Comments (5)
No one thing can show you how terrible Bush has been.
I think that any proponent of action to be taken to fight "global climate change" should be forced to answer this question from George Will's article in the current Newsweek. The question being:
"You say that even if global warming turns out to be no crisis (the World Meteorological Organization says global temperatures have not risen in a decade), even unnecessary measures taken to combat it will be beneficial because "then all we've done is give our kids a cleaner world." But what of the trillions of dollars those measures will cost in direct expenditures and diminished economic growth—hence diminished medical research, cultural investment, etc.? Given that Earth is always warming or cooling, what is its proper temperature, and how do you know?"
Given that George W. Bush promised in the 2000 campaign to regulate C02 as a pollutant and (if memory serves) promised to sign Kyoto, I don't know why we would trust any of the environmental promises of the current Republican candidate. Surely, once in office, a President McCain would suddenly discover that there were other pressing priorities that meant that pushing any kind of global warming initiative would have to wait a couple more decades.
Chicounsel, George Will's questions about global warming have been asked and answered roughly a million times by now. The cost of CO2 controlling measures would have a small and easily absorbed impact on the global economy. Basically, if we had spent the money we wasted in the Iraq War on global warming, the US would be pretty much done. What sort of diminished medical research and cultural investment did the war cost us, I wonder? Has George Will contemplated that question?
The issue is not pegging the Earth's temperature at some theoretical optimum. The issue is reducing the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere. How many tons of fossilized carbon does George Will think we can release into the atmosphere without consequence, and how does he know?
Which shows you, I guess, how terrible Bush has been.
Anyone here could have sat in the Oval Office with their thumb up their ass for seven years and done a better job on climate change.
That's pretty much how George handled global terrorism prior to 9/11, so I'm not suggesting the thumb as the answer for all policy questions.
Comments closed May 26, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
" On climate, interestingly, there's a clear choice between the two candidates and both candidates would be substantially better than Bush. "
Except that McCain, by virtue of being Republican, will inherently give a lot more leverage to the efforts of the Inhofeites.
Posted by Jon H | May 12, 2008 1:43 PM