PORTLAND, Ore. – Sen. John McCain sought to distance himself from President Bush yesterday as he called for a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States to combat climate change.
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 two nations refuse to participate in an international agreement to slow global warming.
In the prepared text of his speech, e-mailed to reporters Sunday night and yesterday morning, 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 Bush.
“I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears,” McCain said pointedly. “I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges.”
In speeches on the campaign trail, 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 increasing fuel economy standards and has opposed tax breaks meant to encourage alternative energy.
In his address yesterday, 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 greenhouse gases by either reducing emissions on their own or buying credits from more efficient producers.
McCain's break with the Bush administration means that the three main presidential candidates have embraced swifter action to fight global warming.
The two Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination, Sens. 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 McCain's past Senate votes against incentives for energy conservation and alternative energy sources like wind and solar power.
Other environmental advocates offered qualified praise for 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.
McCain said yesterday 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.”
McCain's remarks were a clear criticism of 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 rejected the Kyoto protocol, which limits emissions of heat-trapping gases.
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