However the presidential election turns out, the fight against global warming is going to have an ally in the White House next year.
It goes without saying that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton favor aggressive steps to curb climate change. They could hardly do otherwise, even if they wanted to, given the strength of environmental sentiment within the Democratic Party.
The more interesting posture is that of Sen. John McCain, who – as he reminded people this week in his campaign swing through Oregon and Washington – has been bucking his party’s conventional wisdom on global warming for many years.
Republicans like free markets – usually for good reason. But that philosophy makes them leery of the public intervention needed to correct the market failures that allow industries to dump staggering quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at no cost to themselves, letting the public bear the consequences.
Such is the party’s resistance to serious controls on carbon dumping that many Republicans have persuaded themselves that global warming either doesn’t exist or that human industry doesn’t help drive it. Few scientists agree.
Nor does McCain. In Portland Monday, he flayed President Bush’s lack of leadership on global warming.
“I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears,” McCain said. “I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges.”
McCain also has his differences with Obama and Clinton. All three favor a mandatory “cap and trade” system that would set fixed limits to overall carbon emissions and give companies to curtail their own.
But the two Democrats would auction quotas of greenhouse emissions to businesses; McCain would allot them at no charge. They would push to bring emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050; McCain favors 60 percent.
McCain – realistically – says that carbon-free nuclear power must be part of the solution. Obama and Clinton have been reluctant to cross those environmentalists who still view the nuclear option as anathema.
The differences between these respective positions could be debated endlessly. But they have one huge assumption in common: Voluntary goals and gentle coaxing can’t solve this problem. Public regulation is always needed when the atmosphere would otherwise be treated by private industry as a free dump.
It’s reassuring that the next president, Democrat or Republican, will understand that.
