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McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change
PORTLAND, Ore.—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 those nations refuse to participate in an international agreement to slow global warming.
In the prepared text of his speech, e-mailed to reporters on Sunday night and Monday morning, Mr. McCain went so far as to call for punitive tariffs against China and India if they evaded international standards on emissions, but he omitted the threat in his delivered remarks. Aides said he had decided to soften his language because he thought he could be misinterpreted as being opposed to free trade, a central tenet of his campaign and Republican orthodoxy.
But he took a direct shot at Mr. Bush.
"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 in speeches, 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 increasing fuel economy standards and has opposed tax breaks meant to encourage alternative energy.
In his address on Monday, the presumptive Republican president nominee renewed his support for a "cap-and-trade" system in which power plants and other polluters could meet limits on greenhouse gases 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.
But the two Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination, Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, criticized the McCain plan as too timid. Leaders of a number of environmental groups were also sharply critical and noted his past Senate votes against incentives for energy conservation and alternative energy sources like wind and solar power.
Other environmental advocates offered qualified praise for Mr. McCain, who was among the first in Congress to introduce legislation to address the carbon emissions that scientists blame for the warming of the planet.
Mr. McCain said Monday that the problem demanded urgent national and international action.
"Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring," he said at a Vestas wind turbine manufacturing plant in Oregon, where the environment is a central issue for voters. "We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great."
The senator's remarks were a clear criticism of Mr. Bush, who in his first term questioned the scientific basis for global warming and who has remained adamantly opposed to mandatory caps on emissions, which he says would be bad for the American economy. The administration also rejected the Kyoto protocol, which limits emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Mr. McCain's speech, a compilation and sharpening of many of his existing proposals, was most notable as a political document that sought to appeal to the independents he is wooing for November. It put Mr. McCain slightly to the right of center in the environmental debate.
Mr. McCain simultaneously released a television commercial in Oregon about his position on climate change, and startled audience members at his speech by praising and sharing the stage with Ted Kulongoski, the Democratic governor of Oregon who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president.
Mr. McCain is the only Republican presidential candidate this year to call for mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, but his target for reducing those emissions over time is lower than that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and even lower than that in a bill proposed by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia.
In his speech, Mr. McCain advocated cutting emissions 60 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050; Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama propose cutting them by 80 percent over the same period, while the Lieberman-Warner bills calls for a 70 percent reduction. Scientists say reductions of that magnitude are needed to slow and then reverse production of the gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, which are heating the atmosphere and causing long-term climate changes.
Mr. McCain said the United States must seek new, cleaner sources of energy to replace the burning of coal and oil, which produce the bulk of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for the warming of the planet. "As we move toward all of these goals, and over time put the age of fossil fuels behind us," he said, "we must consider every alternative source of power, and that includes nuclear power."
Mr. McCain has long advocated nuclear power as a way to cut emissions, and frequently promotes it in his campaign appearances as an alternative energy source. His view is shared by many utility executives and many Republicans in Congress, but it puts him at odds with Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, who have expressed skepticism about the cost and safety of nuclear power plants.
There are no incentives for building new nuclear plants in the Lieberman-Warner legislation now before the Senate that his Democratic rivals have endorsed, and Mr. McCain suggested Friday that he would not support the measure unless it included some nuclear power subsidies.
Mr. McCain's proposal in his prepared remarks to impose tariffs on industrializing countries like China and India is included in the Lieberman-Warner bill and reflects concerns by both industry and labor in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world. It would mandate punitive duties on products from any country that did not participate in global carbon-reduction system, to balance the lower cost of producing goods using dirty energy sources.
In another contrast with Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain also sought to persuade voters that he has a personal concern and first-hand experience with climate change, which has emerged as a major issue in the 2008 presidential race.
"A few years ago I traveled to the area of Svalbard, Norway —it's a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean," Mr. McCain said. "I was shown the southernmost point where a glacier had reached 20 years earlier. From there, we went northward for miles, up the fjord to see where that same glacier ends today, because all the rest, all the rest, has melted."
Reaction to Mr. McCain proposals from environmental advocates was lukewarm. A number of spokesmen for environmental groups said that his plan did not go far enough but they were grateful to hear a Republican recognizing what they consider an urgent problem and offering a detailed plan to solve it. But he came under considerable criticism for repeatedly opposing federal programs to encourage energy conservation and alternative fuel sources.
Daniel J. Weiss, who heads the global warming program at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic policy group in Washington, said that Mr. McCain had often voted with Democrats on environmental bills but that at other times he had taken contrary positions. The senator opposed a major 2005 energy bill because it included billions of dollars in federal money for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
"You can't count on him," Mr. Weiss said of Mr. McCain. "Sometimes he's good on things, sometimes he's not."
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Portland, Ore., and John M. Broder from Washington. Kitty Bennet contributed reporting from Washington.
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