Sen. John McCain made a climate speech Monday in which he argued that doing something about climate change is a “test of foresight, of political courage, and of the unselfish concern that one generation owes to the next.”
His timing is curious. “Ignore that man behind the curtain,” his speech seemed to be saying. “You know, the man who is beating up on Sen. Barack Obama for refusing to support his gas-tax holiday proposal; the one who will be making it easier for Americans to consume greater amounts of carbon-rich fossil fuel.”
Of course, it is hard to ignore the man behind the curtain.
Both McCain and Sen. Hillary Clinton have supported proposals to slow greenhouse-gas emissions. Both are centered on cap-and-trade initiatives that would cap the amount of carbon the U.S. could consume and force the purchase of carbon permits by those industries in the business of releasing carbon into the atmosphere. This is the premise behind the Lieberman-Warner bill now under active consideration by the Senate, which McCain can rightly claim contains his policy DNA, as he sponsored the earlier McCain-Lieberman bill based on the same cap... Read more
