Straight from the Candidate's Dot Com, Part 3

by Andrea Millar — May 14, 2008

Republican hopeful John McCain, the one who ate all the other fish in your fish tank, has recently solidified his environmental plan on his Web site. After playing coy for months--the first version of this article was a summary of vague elaborations on the joys of stewardship and Teddy Roosevelt--McCain finally put forth a plan on his Web site about just what he intended to do with one of the worlds most prolific trash-producing nations for 4 years.

First, he lets us know officially that he's getting on the back of the cap-and-trade conga line, with a heavy emphasis on market forces as his guiding star. There's also rather unspecific language about "[mobilizing] innovative technologies, and [strengthening] the economy." Does this mean a version of Obama and Clinton's electricity infrastructure makeover, plug-in cars, and Green Collar jobs cultivation? Sure sounds like it. Maybe.

Presently, there's no information about gas mileage in cars being subject to new regulations. In that sense, he's swinging "right" and away from auto-industry watch-dogging (although, honestly, the right-left division to me seems pretty silly). In this distinction, McCain will probably secure himself a few nice campaign donations from certain house-sized automobile makers.

He's also for a more international perspective when it comes to global climate change, although there's not much there about the environmental impact of, for example, supporting the war in Iraq. At a recent event in Portland, Oregon, however, he did point to the US' flub in the Kyoto treaty and vowed to turn the tide. Glad that's a recent memory for him, too. With this new information, you can bet that three out of three prominent candidates have climate change on their list when November comes around. Not bad considering where we were 8 years ago.