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May 15, 2008

McCain: We Have Met the Global Warming Enemy, and It Is . . . (?)

by Micah Tillman

On Monday, John McCain delivered a major talk on global warming. At a Danish wind-energy firm. In Portland, Oregon.

Surely the irony of a South-Western Senator, who spends so much of his time on the Eastern Seaboard, giving a talk about carbon emissions in the North-West — at company owned by Danes (whose execs no doubt must periodically make trans-continental, trans-Atlantic trips) in the middle of a national tour/campaign — escapes no one.

How much would America’s green-house gas emissions go down if Presidential candidates stopped frolicking about the country?

Better yet, how much would “our” green-house emissions go down if Presidential candidates stopped talking so much? The Supreme Court said CO2 is a pollutant. Whether it’s from the lungs of a Senator or the bus he rides doesn’t matter.

The best lines in McCain’s talk came near the beginning:

A large share of the world's oil reserves is controlled by foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart. And as our reliance on oil passes away, their power will vanish with it.

And later he claims:

The goal in all of this is to assure an energy supply that is safe, secure, diverse, and domestic.

But if this is the case, why propose a carbon cap-and-trade system? Why not propose a “Safety/Security/Diversity/Domestic-Energy Cap and Trade System”?

The government could require every company to use at least a certain amount of energy from “Safe, Secure, Diverse, and Domestic” sources, and allow companies to sell credits to each other if they go over the minimum.

But in direct opposition to his attempt to frame his as a national security policy, McCain says:

[W]e 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.

We’re not warned by America’s generals. Not by national security experts. Not by intelligence agencies. We’re warned by “serious and credible scientists.”

In fact, this is not a national security issue for McCain. It’s a global security issue. It’s about the security of the human race, faced with a hostile planet.

And therefore he calls not only for national, but global government action:

[L]east of all should we make exceptions for the very countries that are accelerating carbon emissions while the rest of us seek to reduce emissions. If we are going to establish meaningful environmental protocols, then they must include the two nations that have the potential to pollute the air faster, and in greater annual volume, than any nation ever in history.

McCain is ruthless in his attacks:

China, India, and other developing economic powers in particular are among the greatest contributors to global warming today – increasing carbon emissions at a furious pace – and they are not receptive to international standards.

They are not “polluters.” They do not simply “emit” greenhouse gasses. Instead they “are among the greatest contributors to global warming.”

In the rest of the world, global warming is caused by green-house gasses, and therefore only indirectly by the producers of green-house gasses. But “developing economic powers” are destroying the planet directly.

So what are “we” going to do about it?

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.

Domestic and foreign policy become one and the same. Member states of the USA are given “equal treatment” with sovereign states outside. Local townships belong in the same legal system as foreign governments.

So, despite his claim that, “We need to think straight about the dangers ahead, and to meet the problem with all the resources of human ingenuity at our disposal,” McCain can’t keep straight whether he’s talking about:

(a) a national security issue regarding energy sources,
(b) an attack by the Third World on the environment through recklessly-greedy economic expansion, or
(c) a domestic violence case we instigated prenatally, and now must pay for.

After all, “We made most of our contributions to global warming before anyone knew about global warming,” says McCain. And the more he butchers the word “we,” the less “straight” — and the more murky — his understanding of responsibility becomes:

For all of the last century, the profit motive basically led in one direction -- toward machines, methods, and industries that used oil and gas. Enormous good came from that industrial growth, and we are all the beneficiaries of the national prosperity it built.

. . . makes sense so far . . .

But there were costs we weren't counting, and often hardly noticed.

Really? “We” who? The industrial capitalists of 1900? The average American of 2008 who had nothing to do with the industrial revolution? The Central Planning Committee for American Economic and Technological Expansion, of which McCain served as chair from 1890-1940? Who?

And these terrible costs have added up now, in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and all across the natural world. They are no longer tenable, sustainable, or defensible.

Someone is not only mighty evil in McCain’s book, but has the audacity to “defend” themselves. McCain’s just not sure who it is.

If you want a problem solved, it must first be clear what the problem is, who the culprits are (and for which part[s] of the problem each is responsible) and who the clean-up party will be.

But McCain is so steeped in DC, that he slips back and forth between meaning “government” (on the one hand) and “the American people” (on the other) when he says “we.” And this sloppiness obscures for him the fact that the actions of the former are rarely the actions of the latter.

There is much to fear in a politician who confuses his fellow citizens both with government, and with foreign countries. And McCain has just shown us he is exactly such a politician.

Micah Tillman (micahtillman.com) is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, and the Curator of The WEeding Awards.

Comments

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