Late last year, after his campaign tanked, no one was paying much attention to McCain. As a result, some of the amazing things that he believes didn’t get a lot of attention, such as this Cheney-esque stunner:
John McCain: “When you say wind solar and tide, most every expert that I know says that, if you maximize that in every possible way, the contribution that that would make given the present state of technology is very small, is very small. It’s not a large contribution. It’s wonderful, it’s great to have it, I encourage it everywhere. I hope everyone will, for Christmas, buy their family a solar panel. But, that would be exciting. But they, but, I’d be glad to send you the figures that there’s the amount of — even if we gave it the absolute maximum, uh, wind, solar and tide, uh, etc. The clean tech — the truly clean technologies don’t work.“
(Town Hall Meeting; Portsmouth, N.H. 12/04/07)
Yes, John McCain is the candidate from the 19th century. He has a Luddite mentality that not even the Bush energy Department believes.
This quote reveals what a narrow circle of experts McCain relies on. Just what we need, a President in a bubble. And one that he is completely unable to hear the truth, even when it is presented to him by a hard core conservative, like T. Boone Pickens, as we learned from these amazing remarks last month:
Questioner: … I would just like to see more emphasis on our renewable resources that we have out there. [ … ]
McCain: [ … ] I’m supportive of and the government is doing some pure research and development on a lot of this technology: wind, tide, solar, and others. But I also and this is where Mr. [T. Boone] Pickens and I disagree a little bit. I don’t think we can rely on those to be as much of the solution as some people think. We all love solar. Is there anybody that doesn’t love solar power? But when we look at the actual contributions, compared with the increased demand for energy that’s gonna be part of American in the next 20 years, it does not meet much of those demands, much less the existing requirements that we have.
(Town Hall Meeting; Warren, MI 07/18/08)
If this were true, McCain’s climate plan would be hopeless. That’s probably why his plan allows unlimited carbon offsets and wants to shove 45 nukes down the throats of the American public).
Fortunately, the truth is quite different. McCain, of course, has a Cheney-like ignorance of and disdain for energy efficiency.
Wind, solar PV, and solar baseload, plus efficiency, can handle all of the demand growth for decades, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions sharply).
One thing is certain — this old guy is not the man to solve either our oil problem or our climate problem.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
