Posted on 11/01/2003 7:30:43 AM PST by OESY
John McCain has failed in his first attempt to persuade his Republican colleagues in the Senate to give the issue of global warming the urgent attention it deserves. By a margin of 55 to 43 on Thursday, the Senate rejected a proposal he sponsored with Joseph Lieberman to impose mandatory caps on the emissions from utilities and other industries that scientists believe are heavily responsible for global warming. But Mr. McCain, as we know, does not give up easily. He started his quest for campaign finance reform in 1995 and prevailed six years later. He promises to be just as tenacious on this issue.
The outcome was heartening on several levels. Mr. McCain and Mr. Lieberman are now within striking distance of a majority. This reflects not only lobbying from environmental groups but a growing realization among governors, mayors and businesses large and small that the long-term costs of climate change could be far greater than the costs of bringing it under control.
The bill also found surprising support among Democrats and Republicans from big industrial and coal-producing states, where opposition to any legislation having to do with curbing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases usually runs high. This support materialized despite furious opposition from reactionaries like Oklahoma's James Inhofe, who stubbornly denies the science of global warming, and from the White House — which, true to form, warned of an economic Armageddon.
The bill is in fact a modest version of the 1997 Kyoto accord, which President Bill Clinton embraced but Mr. Bush rejected. Kyoto would indeed have required big changes in how we use and produce energy, as any determined assault on global warming eventually must. But McCain-Lieberman aims merely to accustom the nation gently to doing business in a different way. One suspects that the Senate will someday wake up to the fact that the White House sees bogymen where none exist.
If the Times calls anyone a "reactionary," it's a safe bet he/she has taken mainstream positions in the part of the country outside Manhattan -- where I live in the midst of the liberal mecca of the Upper Westside. When will the Times curb it's own gaseous emissions? And, that judgment doesn't rely on junk science.
But, the Times wants to follow the fads (sic), declaring 20 years ago that a new Ice Age was beginning.
As I recall the McCain-Feingold legislation on campaign finance was badly flawed and, as it turned out, the Times support was self-serving, tainted by the corporate welfare loophole that restricted political advertising only in media outlets other than their newspapers.
I'd be surprised if John McCain is still a senator six years from now.
The "Republicans" voting FOR this were: Chafee(RI), Collins(ME), Snowe(ME), McCain(AZ), Lugar(IN), and Gregg(NH). The usual RINO's you would expect but I don't understand what Gregg is doing with this pathetic group. Except maybe for Indiana I didn't know that these states were considered "big industrial states" or major coal producers either.
Awwww, ... too bad :(
Hasn't he been reading the paper, watching the TV, listening to radio on the destruction in CA from the fires? Why won’t he ask a real-scientist what all that is going to do to the atmosphere? Oh I’m sorry I forgot he’s a flipping ……
I think when Russia opted out a few weeks ago, it became a dead issue - interesting to note that Putin used the same basic argument that President Bush did when he first took office:
- Too little effect
- Too costly to the ecnomy for such little effect
- Based on bad science (i.e., radical environmental activists provided most of the "scientific" data)
The senate also rejected it in 1997 with a 97 - 0 vote against. Funny how the NYT's leaves that out.
Great catch!
...and advised the Congress not to pass, because it was fundementally flawed (Though he put his signature on it).
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