Unseasonably warm weather brought out a surge of voters in New Hampshire’s primary — and is it mere coincidence that the only Republican with a real plan to tackle climate change won? Well, OK, probably yes. But John McCain, who handily prevailed in the Granite State’s GOP primary, did make a deliberate appeal to New Hampshire voters who care about the environment. “I will clean up the planet,” he told a crowd on Monday, deviating from his usual campaign spiel. “I will make global warming a priority.” McCain told Grist in an interview last year that he first got clued in on climate change during the 2000 presidential campaign, when New Hampshire voters kept asking him what he was going to do about the problem. When McCain returned to the Senate after that unsuccessful race, he teamed up with Sen. Joe Lieberman to introduce landmark global warming legislation. However, McCain has declined to sign on to tougher climate bills introduced more recently in the Senate. For more about his green record and platform, check out Grist’s McCain fact sheet.
