McCain's McClimate plan

John McCain's plan to decelerate climate change brings to mind the problem posed by fast food restaurant fare. It's attractive and convenient, but ultimately bad for you.

Burgers, fries, onion rings and milkshakes are popular because don't have to wait long to satisfy your hunger, they taste darn good and they don't cost a fortune. You can't live on them for long, though. Just ask Morgan "Super Size Me" Spurlock. Indeed, fast food is at the heart of one of the modern society's most pressing health challenges: rising obesity rates. And you can't make a McDonald's menu healthy just by adding a salad option. There are more calories in a Premium Southwest Salad with Crispy Chicken than a double cheesebuger (450 vs 440), and that's without the 100-170 extra calories that come with the dressing.

The reality is, if you want to lose wait and reduce your chances of a heart attack, you can't make McDonald's or any of its competitors, a central part of your diet. And so it is with McCain's approach to the climate crisis. While he recognizes the need for actions that "only Congress can enact and the president can sign," beneath all that talk of embracing clean energy is a faith in the free market. And even though McCain recognizes that "the profit motive basically led in one direction ;;;;; toward machines, methods, and industries that used oil and gas," he continues to insist that profits will supply the way out of the trap they created in the first place.

That is anything but surprising, coming from someone who has voted in synchrony with the current administration 95 % of the time. But it simply doesn't make sense to fight fire with fire, to use a perhaps more apt metaphor.

Like the McDonald's marketing machine, however, McCain does an impressive job of wrapping his discredited and dangerous plan in attractive packaging. He introduced it yesterday with a whole lot of science, and language that could have been cribbed from Al Gore's climate-change slide-show talking points. For example:

Our scientists have also seen and measured reduced snowpack, with earlier runoffs in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. We have seen sustained drought in the Southwest, and across the world average temperatures that seem to reach new records every few years. We have seen a higher incidence of extreme weather events. In the frozen wilds of Alaska, the Arctic, Antarctic, and elsewhere, wildlife biologists have noted sudden changes in animal migration patterns, a loss of their habitat, a rise in sea levels.

...

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. We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great.

To be fair, it is refreshing to hear a Republican candidate for president embrace science. But McCain's record of paying heed to scientific advice on environmental issues is far weaker than either of his Democratic challengers. His lifetime green voting score from the League of Conservation Voters is 24 percent, while Clinton and Obama each get 86, and he scores a big fat zero for 2007, because he missed every single environmental vote in the Senate.

You can read about many of the specific flaws in the plan McCain unveiled yesterday at Climate Progress. There Joe Romm will explain what's wrong with counting carbon emissions credits from sectors of the economy outside the trading system, among other examples of McCain's failure to see below the surface. And if that piques your interest, Fred Pearce has an insightful feature in a recent New Scientisthat's wrong with the whole Clean Development Mechanism that will govern international carbon offset programs.

The common theme is the inability of free market forces to do what's in the long-term interest of civilization as a whole, even with the collective talents of industrial researchers and engineers at our (their) disposal. So when you hear McCain proclaim that "the federal government can't just summon those talents by command ;;;;; only the free market can draw them out," it's probably a good idea to remember that it wasn't the free market that won the last couple of world wars. Or put humans on the moon. Or got rid of small pox. Or laid the foundation of the internet, for that matter. It was all government.

Scientists were integral to those efforts, of course. And again, it is wonderful hear McCain embrace the reality of climate change as embraced by scientists. But few of those scientists work for corporations.
The reasons are obvious to anyone who has ever played the stock markets.

The free market is no more capable of reorganizing the industrial engines of civilization ;;;;; which is what an effective response to the climate crisis will require ;;;;; than is McDonald's capable of supplying a healthy diet to the billions and billions it serves. To imply otherwise by appealing to science is to misunderstand the very nature of science.

So when it comes to McCain's ability to lead us away from catastrophic global warming, I'm not loving it. I do fear, however, that he has mastered enough the language to fool a significant number of people who don't have the luxury of a post-secondary degree in atmospheric sciences or the time to read the critiques closely. Instead, they'll probably find his new television ad quite convincing, as he deftly places his plan between the false extremes of "crippling regulations" and those who "deny the problem even exists."

Never mind that there is no evidence to support the allegation that government regulations will cripple anyone or anything. McDonald's doesn't need hard evidence to sell its burgers, either. Such talk is bound to attract those who consider themselves moderate Republicans, and those who can see past his rhetoric are going to have to work hard to counter it.