The big news came from John McCain on Monday. McCain Pledges To Combat Climate Change is the story from Reuters' "Planet Ark" service. In an obvious attempt to delineate the difference between President Bush and himself, he said "I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears. I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges."
McCain's speech was thoughtful too about the problem of getting China and India on board. He said: "In my approach to global climate-control efforts, we will apply the principle of equal treatment. We will apply the same environmental standards to industries in China, India, and elsewhere that we apply to our own industries. And if industrializing countries seek an economic advantage by evading those standards, I would work with the European Union and other like-minded governments that plan to address the global warming problem to develop effective diplomacy, effect a transfer of technology, or other means to engage those countries that decline to enact a similar cap."
The story from NPR on this, included the news that "A prepared text of McCain's speech supplied to reporters suggested that western countries might use trade sanctions to push China and India into cutting their carbon output. But in delivering the speech, McCain substituted softer language, saying diplomacy and technical support should be enough to move the two countries."
He seems to be referring to the idea of a trade mechanism related to carbon consumption that I wrote about here in December. See the last paragraph at that post where I described the idea: "So, if you can't get China or some other recalcitrant to restrain GHG emissions through some international protocol (to which the Bali meetings were supposed to point the way), then take it out of their exchequer by creating barriers to products created in high-GHG economies."
For a good, well-rounded look at McCain's position and history on climate change, and the positions of the other two candidates remaining, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, look at this item from "The Online NewsHour." (For more on cap-and-trade and other stories related to the carbon markets, you can see these posts.)
All three Presidential candidates support a cap-and-trade system and, for me, that is reassuring.
