Some days you gotta almost feel sorry for John McCain. He’s trying so hard to paint himself green. Which doesn’t do him any good among the environmental dunderheads in his own party. And doesn’t convince all that many of the rest of us that he has a clue, as Joseph Romm affirmed in detail in a thoroughgoing smackdown over at Climate Progress.
Not only would McCain’s prescriptions seriously fail to address global warming, but he also has a voting record, the ungreen nature of which is available for all to see. When he deigns to show up for eco-related votes (which, as the League for Conservation Voters noted, he didn’t do at all during the group’s last measuring period), he gives the finger to environmentally far-sighted legislation about three-fourths of the time.
His appearance in Portland, Oregon, Monday gave some of the megamedia a chance to half-swoon over the Senator’s proposals in the global warming department. While Time was mildly critical, it gave him credit because he "really wants to fix the problem," citing his break from GOP orthodoxy on global warming in 2000 and a couple of pieces of failed legislation.
Well, sure, McCain isn’t the worst Republican in this matter. And there are some pretty dumb Democrats, too. But McCain’s latest foray seems all part of the scheme. As Jon Perr of BlueOregon pointed out after the speech, citing a comment by South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham, McCain’s stance is "to use the environment as a cudgel to beat back those claiming McCain represented a third Bush term."
The Vestas Wind Energy Training Facility in Portland chosen by McCain’s campaign team may have seemed like a brilliant move. But it actually provided a perfect backdrop for what has been wrong with U.S. energy policy since Ronald Reagan stepped into office and immediately started dissing advocates of renewable power and conservation. Vestas is Denmark’s leading wind-turbine manufacturer. Make that the world’s leader, with 23% share of the entire market. It’s a key reason Denmark already generates 20% of its total electrical output from wind power and has plans for lots more.
In March, Vestas opened its first U.S. factory in Windsor, Colorado. As the company announced to shareholders in its first quarter report issued May 8, it plans to expand the work force there to 400 because it has ...
...resolved to build the world’s largest tower factory in Colorado. The decision was made in spite of the uncertainty surrounding the extension of the PTC [production tax credit] scheme. However, with 25 states in the USA already having adopted targets for renewable energy's proportion of the local energy mix, Vestas is ... confident that the USA will henceforth pursue a more long-term energy policy instead of the prevailing highly short-term approach to wind power. Wind power calls for a detailed siting legislation and should form a natural part of the much required renewal of the US power grid. The tower facility investment, which underlines Vestas’ belief in a robust US growth market, is expected, along with national legislative measures, soon to convince more European sub-suppliers to come to the USA where they can join forces with Vestas to support the wind power investments made by North American customers.
That could have been a U.S.-owned factory in Windsor, and it could have been built 10 or 15 or 20 years ago if the conventional wisdom of politicians (including some on the Democratic side of the aisle) hadn’t been that renewable energy was a big joke, or, at best, an idea not worth fighting for. From fiscal 1982 through fiscal 2006, the federal renewables research and development budget, adjusted for inflation, was less than Jimmy Carter’s final budget. Three times less than Carter's during Mister Bush’s first term. Bill Clinton made a stab at increasing the renewables budget, but the great futurist Newt Gingrich blocked his efforts.
Consequently, although wind turbines are being installed in the United States at a rapid pace, benefiting from far-sighted state governments, most of them aren’t U.S. made. Why? Because politicians like Senator John McCain relentlessly and myopically voted against budgets and policies that would have encouraged the creation of a sustainable, job-rich renewables industry the way Denmark did starting three decades ago. These politicians surrendered a U.S. lead in technology and gave away U.S. jobs. We all get to pay the price today. The Danes, on the other hand, have so much wind-generated electricity that they are having to find new uses for it. The Danish utility Dong Energy "plans to build a nationwide system to charge electric cars with the surplus wind power."
As NBBooks wondered in his Daily Kos Diary Wednesday upon the release of a new Department of Energy report, Can the U.S. achieve 20% wind energy by 2030?:
Jim Walker, Vice President of renewable energy development company enXco and President-Elect of [the American Wind Energy Association], noted that if U.S. installed capacity were the same as Germany’s per capita, the U.S. would have 43 gigawatts (GW) of wind turbine capacity installed now, instead of 17 GW. And if the U.S. had the same capacity as Germany per unit of land area, the U.S. would have 320 GW installed now. The state with largest amount installed is Texas, but it is Iowa that leads in proportion of total electricity produced by wind, with 5.5 percent. And if a transmission system would be put in place, Iowa could export four times the total electricity it needs. Montana and the Dakotas alone have enough wind energy potential to supply the entire U.S. demand for electricity.
It’s not as if wind-energy potential is fresh news. At the Solar Energy Research Institute, where I worked as an editor, maps were being drawn 30 years ago pointing out this abundant resource. If the renewables neanderthals hadn’t half-strangled SERI and the soft-path part of the energy budget, today we wouldn’t be talking about 20% wind power for 2030, we’d be talking about it for 2010.
While Time implies that McCain got religion in this matter in 2000, that's bunkum. As the Center for American Progress reported:
In 2002 and 2005, there were votes in the Senate to require utilities nationwide to generate 10 percent or 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy resources. Sen. McCain voted against renewable electricity every time.
McCain declared to the on-line environment journal Grist in October that "I’m not one who believes that we need to subsidize things." Sure enough, he opposes subsidies for solar and wind, the latter being 1% of U.S. electricity. But, with his mavericktude on full display, he has no problem with continued subsidies for the mature nuclear industry, which provides 20% of U.S. electricity.
The Senator from Arizona’s stance on renewables isn’t his only problem on the energy and global warming front. As Romm points out in Part 2 of his assessment of the Portland speech:
The entire cost containment foundation of McCain’s climate plan is quicksand.
Just like his entire campaign.