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McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change
05/13/2008
Senator John McCain sought to distance himself from President Bush on Monday as he called for a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States to combat climate change.
Mr. McCain, in a speech at a wind power company, also pledged to work with the European Union to diplomatically engage China and India, two of the world’s biggest polluters, if they refuse to participate in an international agreement to slow global warming.
“I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears,” Mr. McCain said pointedly. “I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges.”
In speeches on the campaign trail, Mr. McCain frequently highlights the threat of climate change, but he has a mixed record on the environment in the Senate. In recent years he has pushed legislation to curb emissions that contribute to climate change, but he has missed votes on toughening fuel economy standards and has opposed tax breaks meant to encourage alternative energy.
In his address on Monday, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, renewed his support for a “cap-and-trade” system in which power plants and other polluters could meet limits on heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide by either reducing emissions on their own or buying credits from more efficient producers.
Mr. McCain’s break with the Bush administration means that the three main presidential candidates have embraced swifter action to fight global warming.--The New York Times, 5/13/08
McCain to pitch climate-change plan in Oregon
05/12/2008
John McCain heads to the Pacific Northwest today to propose a climate-change plan, addressing an issue integral to his presidential bid in a region that could be crucial.
The Arizona senator, who often cites climate change as a policy difference with President Bush, plans to renew support for a "cap-and-trade" system that "sets clear limits on all greenhouse gases, while also allowing the sale of rights to excess emissions," according to excerpts of his speech released Sunday.
McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, plans to propose a series of goals for reduction of carbon emissions, ending at 60% below 1990 levels by the year 2050.
A cap-and-trade system would "change the dynamic of our energy economy," McCain says in the prepared remarks. It would encourage industry to adopt or develop cleaner forms of energy, such as wind, solar, nuclear and "clean coal."
Environmental organizations said McCain deserves credit for his cap-and-trade proposals, but some called them inadequate in face of the threats posed by global warming.
One group, the League of Conservation Voters, said McCain has a congressional career score of 24% on environmental issues.
In a statement, Gene Karpinski, the group’s president, said it appears that McCain "hopes to use global warming and the environment to distance himself from the Bush administration," but given McCain’s record, "that distance can be measured in inches."--USA Today, 5/12/08
Environmental Stances Are Balancing Act For McCain
05/12/2008
McCain has made the environment one of the key elements of his presidential bid. He speaks passionately about the issue of climate change on the campaign trail, and he plans to outline his vision for combating global warming in a major speech today in Portland, Ore.
"I’m proud of my record on the environment," he said at a news conference Friday at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. "As president, I will dedicate myself to addressing the issue of climate change globally."
But an examination of McCain’s voting record shows an inconsistent approach to the environment: He champions some "green" causes while casting sometimes contradictory votes on others.
The senator from Arizona has been resolute in his quest to impose a federal limit on greenhouse gas emissions, even when it means challenging his own party. But he has also cast votes against tightening fuel-efficiency standards and resisted requiring public utilities to offer a specific amount of electricity from renewable sources.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s senior policy adviser, said the senator does not always please "environmental groups who are single-issue, litmus test" organizations. Instead, he said, McCain seeks to weigh the costs and benefits of each environmental issue.
"Look, he always balances what are the environmental implications of these enterprises and what are the economic benefits that could come from them," Holtz-Eakin said. "That is, in general, an approach which may be harder to read than a flat ideological X or Y, but it’s how he reads these things, it’s how he evaluates these kinds of decisions."
As a result, McCain scores significantly lower than his Democratic rivals for the presidency, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), in interest groups’ studies of his environmental voting record. McCain’s lifetime League of Conservation Voters score is 24 percent, compared with 86 for Obama and 86 for Clinton; Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund’s conservation report card gave him 38 percent in the 108th Congress and 40 in the 109th. (McCain has missed every major environmental vote this Congress, giving him a zero rating.)--The Washington Post, 5/12/08
Opeds & Editorials
Big Oil’s Friends in the Senate
05/05/2008
Listen to almost any politician, President Bush included, and you’ll hear that the fight against global warming cannot be won without cleaner technologies that will ease dependence on fossil fuels. Yet these same politicians are on the verge of allowing modest but vital tax credits to expire that are crucial to the future of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.
These credits are necessary to attract new investment in renewable sources until they become competitive with cheaper, dirtier fuels like coal. When the credits disappear, investments shrivel. The production tax credit for wind energy has been allowed to expire three times. In each case, new investment dropped by more than 70 percent. The credits for wind and solar expire at the end of this year, so action now is important.
Though there is plenty of blame to go around, Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans bear a heavy burden. The House approved, as part of last year’s energy bill, a multiyear extension of the credits, while insisting — under its pay-as-you-go rules — that they be offset by rescinding an equivalent amount in tax credits for the oil companies. The oil companies (though rolling in profits) screamed, Mr. Bush lofted veto threats, and the Senate, by a one-vote margin, refused to go along.
Senator John McCain — who is far ahead of his party on climate change — missed that crucial vote. He could be a hero if he now rode in off the campaign trail and corralled the Republican votes needed to extend the tax credits; his vote alone might be enough.--The New York Times (5/5/08)
Empty Promises on Warming
04/22/2008
White House aides had billed President Bush’s Rose Garden speech last week as a major turning point at which the president would unveil an ambitious set of proposals to address the problem of global warming — a late-breaking act of atonement, as it were, for seven years of doing nothing.
Sadly, Mr. Bush’s ideas amounted to the same old stuff, gussied up to look new. Instead of trying to make up for years of denial and neglect, his speech seemed cynically designed to prevent others from showing the leadership he refuses to provide — to derail Congress from imposing a price on emissions of carbon dioxide and the states from regulating emissions on their own.
Mr. Bush’s main proposal was to halt the growth of emissions in the United States, chiefly from power plants, by 2025. This means, of course, that after seven years of letting emissions grow, he would allow them to continue to grow for another 17 years — and would come nowhere near the swift reductions in emissions that scientists believe are necessary to prevent the worst consequences of climate change.
It is hard to find anything redeeming in this speech, though it contains two obvious truths: This president has no intention of addressing climate change. The next president will have no choice but to do better.--The New York Times, 4/22/08Cap Greenhouse Gases
04/02/2008
Just for a minute, let’s stop wringing our hands about the collapse of polar ice shelves, rising sea levels and other dire consequences of global warming. Instead, let’s focus on what we can do.
A report issued by a coalition of environmental groups concludes that, between 1990 and 2005, New England’s greenhouse-gas emissions grew by 10.9 percent. Connecticut’s grew by 8.3 percent.
The report also makes the point that New England is not on track to meet 2010 and 2020 goals for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Connecticut — and New England generally — are still a long way from being out of the weeds. Yet the latest figures on declines in greenhouse-gas emissions are encouraging. They underscore the simple truth that decisions made individually by a lot of people add up to major changes.
When it comes to global warming, however, we don’t have much time. Which is why lawmakers must approve legislation putting Connecticut as a whole — state government, municipalities, utilities, businesses and residents — on a path toward greenhouse-gas reductions.--The Hartford Courant, 4/2/08
Global Warming News
Wind Can Supply 20% of U.S. Electricity, Report Says
05/13/2008
The Energy Department said yesterday that the United States has the ability to meet 20 percent of its electricity-generation needs with wind by 2030, enough to displace 50 percent of natural gas consumption and 18 percent of coal consumption.
But in a report drawn up by its national laboratories, the department said that meeting the target would require more improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines, an expansion of the wind industry and a fivefold increase in the pace of wind-turbine installation.
The report said a boost in wind capacity to 20 percent of electricity generation "could potentially defer the need to build some new coal capacity, avoiding or postponing the associated carbon emissions." The department said that expanding the use of wind to generate power could avert a need for more than 80 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity; its current projections say that new coal-fired plants capable of producing about 140 gigawatts of power could be built by 2030 to meet rising demand.
The report noted that a big expansion of wind-power generation would also cut the amount of water used by the electricity industry by 17 percent by 2030.-The Washington Post, 5/13/08
Iowa’s Lutheran Churches Going Green
05/12/2008
Climate change is not ‘gender neutral’
05/12/2008
In the late 1970s, Wangari Maathai helped start the Green Belt Movement in her native Kenya. The idea behind it is simple: By planting trees, women in Kenya help improve the environment and make their own lives easier by ensuring a steady supply of wood for cooking.
Now, after 30 years and 40 million trees planted, Maathai—who in 2004 won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts—is warning that climate change could erase those gains. "Women, especially in the developing world, are dependent primarily on natural resources," she told reporters last week in Washington. "The land, the forests, the mountains."
In times of trouble, that often means poor women don’t have the resources to move away and start anew. "Men are who we usually see at borders," Maathai said. "When there is drought, when there is crop failure, it is the women and the children who are the most adversely affected."
A more dramatic example, experts said, is the emerging link between climate change and AIDS in Africa.
In many African countries, women grow food crops like sorghum and millet using simple rain-fed agriculture techniques, while men raise cash crops like cotton or cultivate livestock. In times of drought, when crop failures loom, that pattern changes. Men looking for money migrate to urban areas to trade or find low-wage jobs. Women have fewer options.
"They can’t sell off goats, get a loan or get a higher-paying job," Raworth said. "They are forced to sell the only asset they have, their bodies."
The end result can be a spike in HIV infections when drought looms. This effect has been documented in the African nation of Zambia, which has experienced sustained drought in recent years.--ClimateWire, 5/12/08
Press Releases
Iowa’s Lutheran Churches Going Green
05/12/2008
Re: Climate Change Legislation – Urgent Plea for Enactment of Carbon Fees
05/09/2008
Dear Senators and Representatives:
We are writing to you about the urgent problem of climate change. Each of us has approximately two decades of public-sector experience in environmental enforcement.1 In addition, Allan has substantial experience with cap-and-trade programs. The purpose of this letter is to communicate the bases for our opinion that attempting to address climate change through a cap-and-trade approach alone (as is currently contemplated in most of the major bills before Congress) is an inefficient and ineffective strategy to address the most pressing problem of our time. We believe that failure by the United States to enact meaningful and escalating carbon fess in the near future will result in an unacceptable risk of devastating and irreversible global climate change. Even if you have doubts concerning the time-frame remaining for effective action, please join us in insisting on a strategy that will effectively address this unacceptable threat to our children’s future.--Laurie Williams & Allan Zabel
Iowa sportsmen want global warming leadership
11/01/2007
Newsletters
Debate Shifts On Global Warming
04/11/2007
A former presidential candidate and a potential presidential candidate from opposite ends of the political spectrum met to debate global warming this week, but unlike past events, this marked a noticeable shift in the debate on global warming.
New Hampshire Voters send strong message on Global Warming
03/27/2007
As the nation's warmest winter on record draws to a close, Granite State voters are demonstrating that global warming is a top priority for New Hampshire.
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by Andrew Snow