McCain hat sehr gute Chancen, die nächsten US-Präsidentschaftswahlen zu gewinnen.
You've said that global warming would be one of three key issues for your presidency. Why do you think the issue is important?
[...]
And I think most, if not all, of the ways that we can address this issue are through profit-motive, free-enterprise-system-driven green technologies. General Electric dedicated itself to green technologies, and guess what? They're still making a lot of money.
Some argue that the U.S. should not sign on to an international climate agreement unless China and India participate. Do you agree?
I agree, if only from a purely political standpoint. You're not going to get anything through the Congress of the United States unless it's truly international and India and China are engaged. Now, there are lots of ways to negotiate. There are steps that we can take as a country to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. But you're going to have to have the two rising greenhouse-gas emitters in the world involved in an international treaty, I believe, to pass it through the Senate.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/15/mccain/
Die beiden demokratischen Kandidaten wollen die carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 reduzieren, McCain nur um 65%.
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/ele...s/climate.html
On June 21, 2007, the Senate voted on the Baucus amendment to the energy bill, which would have removed some oil company subsidies in order to fund renewable energy. The amendment failed to pass. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
On the same day, the Senate held a cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill. The vote succeeded. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
On Dec. 7, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat on the energy bill, which had become substantially bolder after being aligned with the House version. The vote failed. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
On Dec. 13, 2007, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill, which had the Renewable Portfolio Standard stripped out of it but retained a measure that would shift oil company subsidies to renewables. The vote failed - by one vote, 59-40. Where was McCain? He didn't vote - the only Senator not to do so.
On Feb. 6, 2008, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass a stimulus bill containing a number of green energy incentives. The cloture motion failed, by one vote. Where was McCain? He didn't vote - again, the only Senator not to do so.
You get the idea. The Democrats in Congress have been struggling to change US energy policy, to raise standards and shift some federal expenditures from fossil to renewable energy. In several cases, McCain could have made the difference between success and failure. In some cases - as with regard to, e.g., the stimulus bill - McCain's campaign has claimed that he would have voted against it anyway, so the result wouldn't have changed. In this way, McCain gets to signal to political insiders on the right that he's with them, without putting himself on record where the public can see it. That's a funny sort of straight talk.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/021208EB.shtml
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/15/10152/5591
He thinks that nuclear power should be greatly expanded.
He also promised to have the United States join the international climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, although only on the condition that India and China join, too. Many experts say that condition is unlikely to be met at the moment.
The senator opposes a measure that many environmentalists desire, a carbon tax, most likely as another gasoline tax. He told the warming and energy conference that he generally opposed new taxes but that he also believed that poor workers who tended to commute to work longer distances would be disproportionately affected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/us...17climate.html
Obama says stronger than McCain on climate change
[...]
Obama, Clinton, and McCain all support building a so-called "cap and trade" system that would issue big polluters such as oil companies and power producers permits to emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the main gas blamed for global warming.
Under such a system, companies that exceed their CO2 limits must buy more permits to pollute, while those that come in beneath their limits may sell the permits on a market.
Obama said his plan was superior to McCain's because it required companies to buy all of those permits up front -- a process known as auctioning.
"I've been very specific about proposing 100 percent auctioning, which makes an enormous difference in terms of how effective it's going to be," Obama said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/lates.../idUSN08530733
Sen. McCain, whose first principle of climate-change policy is that it be “rational” and “feasible,” says he wants to find the balance between economic pain and environmental gain. While many economists think a direct carbon tax is the easiest way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and raise cash for government coffers, Sen. McCain says carbon taxes would hurt the man on the street. (Some economists suspect Sen. McCain doesn’t know what he is talking about.)
One key part of Sen. McCain’s bill, like many other climate-change proposals now pending, is that he would allocate a big chunk of emissions permits to industry for free. They would have to buy in an auction some smaller portion of the permits. Europe did something similar when it started its emissions-trading scheme; permits were given away generously in 2005 and will be auctioned in 2013.
That’s what has Sen. Obama riled up. “I’ve been very specific about proposing 100 percent auctioning, which makes an enormous difference in terms of how effective it’s going to be,” Sen. Obama told Reuters. He added that he is in regular talks with former vice-president Gore and hopes to start work on climate-change policy as soon as he secures the nomination.
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalca...googlenews_wsj
John McCain presidential campaign, 2008
...speech on Energy policy was given on April 23 2007: His speech connected energy independence with national security, climate change, and the environment. McCain proposed increasing ethanol imports, moving from exploration to production of plug-in electric vehicles, and better harnessing nuclear power much as Europe has managed to do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mc...campaign,_2008
John McCain
a.) "Limit carbon emissions by harnessing market forces that will bring advanced technologies, such as nuclear energy, to the market faster, reduce our dependence on foreign supplies of energy, and see to it that America leads in a way that ensures all nations do their rightful share."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...40.html?page=9
No climate for old men: 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:
As increasingly desperate climate scientists have been telling us, the effects of global warming are occurring faster than anyone had thought possible.
The next president must make reducing GHG emissions a central focus of his or her administration if we want to avoid the worst impacts of global warming: catastrophic sea level rise, widespread drought and desertification, and loss of up to 70 percent of all species.
While McCain may understand the scale of the climate problem, he does not appear to understand the scale of the solution. He understands the country needs to put in place a mandatory cap on GHG emissions and a trading system to energize American innovation. But in a recent Republican debate, he denied that a cap and trade system is a mandate, even though it would arguably be the most far-reaching government mandate ever legislated.
Moreover, like most conservatives,
he doesn’t understand or accept the critical role government must play to make that system succeed. Besides initiating a cap-and-trade system, the next president must:
1. Appoint judges who won’t gut climate change efforts.
2. Appoint leaders and staff of key federal agencies who take climate change seriously and believe in the necessary solutions.
3. Embrace an aggressive and broad-based technology deployment strategy to keep the cost of the cap and trade system as low as possible.
4. Lead a change in utility regulations to encourage, rather than discourage, energy efficiency and clean energy.
5. Offer strong public advocacy to reverse the years of muzzling and misinformation of the Bush administration.
As I explain in the piece, McCain is unlikely to do any one of those things, let alone all of them.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/02/0...lobal-warming/
