John McCain

Confused Washington Times disses McCain and Obama on lack of carbon offsets

In a bizarre twist, the conservative Washington Times, which would normally be critical of fuzzy environmental strategies like carbon offsets, is actually attacking the candidates for not offsetting all their campaign emissions. Opening with an absurd headline, "Green crusades lot of talk," the Times writes:

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have called for strict mandatory limits to control greenhouse gases but they aren't leading by example -- each has failed to pay for offsets to cover all of his campaign's carbon emissions.

How does not taking (dubious) voluntary actions carry any implications about one's commitment to serious mandatory limits? Advocating mandatory limits is based on an understanding that two decades of the voluntary approach has not reversed emissions trends. And again and again we've seen how offsets provide at best a limited environmental benefit.

Surely the WT can find more things stories to write about. I've heard it said that Senator McCain has called for carbon limits that are in fact mandatory, but he refuses to call them mandatory. Nah, no story there ...

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Wisconsin goes to Obama and McCain

The Wisconsin primary goes to Barack Obama and John McCain — both got about 55%, to Clinton’s 43 and Huckabee’s 37 respectively (Ron Paul got his usual 4). That’s Obama’s ninth victory in a row. Clinton’s chances of reversing this tide are looking slimmer all the time. On that note, both winners seem to be […]

How strong is McCain’s commitment to fighting global warming?

The following post was first published on Passing Through, The Nation‘s guest blog, where I will be posting all month. Though recession and war are probably higher on the public’s immediate priority list, there is no challenge of greater historical consequence facing the next U.S. president than the climate crisis. It is vitally important that […]

John McCain avoids using the word ‘mandatory’ when discussing cap-and-trade

When will the media stop calling McCain a straight-talker and realize he is a pathological doubletalker?

I realize the "L" word is frowned upon in politics, so instead of using that word, which, in any case, doesn't do justice to the full range of doubletalk in the political arena -- let's just imagine there is an agreed-upon objective scale from 1 to 10 of veracity (with 5 being half-true) that goes something like this:

(10) Fred Thompson, December 2007: "I'm not particularly interested in running for president."

(9) Bush, May 2000: "I think we agree, the past is over."

(8) Bush, January 2000: "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."

(5) Bush, June 1999: "I am a compassionate conservative."

(3) Bush, September 2002: "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

(2) Nixon, November 1973: "I'm not a crook."

(1) McCain, January 2008 (in reply to Tim Russert's statement, "Senator McCain, you are in favor of mandatory caps" [which would be a 10 on this scale]): "No, I'm in favor of cap-and-trade."

Why John McCain isn’t the candidate to stop global warming

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:

Romney out

Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race today, which all but insures that John McCain will be the Republican candidate. I wonder: how will Republicans and industry groups lobby against a carbon bill if their president supports it? That is a strategic dilemma I’m sure they have their finest minds working on as we […]

Will the media give McCain a free ride on climate?

My latest post on The Nation is up, asking: Will the media give McCain a free ride on climate? I know there’s a sense out there that because McCain is relatively sane on climate, this race might pose the opportunity to have a serious discussion of the issue. But my fear is the opposite: that […]

Cali gov Schwarzenegger endorses John McCain

So Schwarzenegger endorsed McCain today, citing his fight against wasteful spending, his "vision" for protecting the environment ("and the economy simultaneously"), and his national security credentials. Of course McCain’s battle against earmarks is entirely symbolic, given that they are a tiny sliver of federal spending. His "vision" on global warming amounts to an outdated and […]

Notable quotable

"… there are a number of pieces of legislation where [McCain’s] views are out of the mainstream, at least in my view, of conservative Republican thought. So, for instance, he’s opposed to drilling in ANWR, I believe. … … And then now McCain-Lieberman, which is a unilateral — meaning U.S.-only imposed — cap-and-trade program, which […]