Sunday, March 9, 2008

Sorting out McCain's Position on Carbon Regulation


Last March, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Joe Leiberman cosponsored a bill to cap carbon emissions, reducing new releases to 2004 levels by 2012 and to 1990 levels by 2020.

This knowledge has left me pretty much at ease through most of the presidential primaries, at least in judging a candidate on the issue of climate change legislation to result from our country's ultimate choice. I also remember his signature (next to John Kerry's) on the climate change committee investigation of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts in 2000. As "hacfred" outlined in "Where the Candidates Stand", the Democratic options leave less to worry about.

Listening to McCain's victory speech Tuesday night, however, gave me a quiver of dread. His position towards industry regulation is uniformly to have no new taxes or regulation that would "inhibit economic growth". He plans to encourage development of new technologies to relieve us from dependence on foreign oil. These broad, non-committal statements sound all to familiar. Especially when coupled with a heavy dependence on the cue cards to remember exactly what that statement should be.

1 comment:

Cassandra said...

Perhaps he's just pandering.