Has McCain added an environmental economist to his writing staff?
"For all of the last century, the profit motive basically led in one direction - toward machines, methods and industries that used oil and gas," said McCain. "Enormous good came from that industrial growth, and we are all the beneficiaries of the national prosperity it built. But there were costs we weren't counting, and often hardly noticed. And these terrible costs have added up now, in the atmosphere, in the oceans and all across the natural world."
Nothing new here, just a different tone.
McCain's major solution is to implement a cap-and-trade program on carbon-fuel emissions, like a similar program in the Clean Air Act that was used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that triggered acid rain.
Industries would be given emission targets, and those coming in under their limit could sell their surplus polluting capacity to companies unable to meet their target.
McCain wants the country to return to 2005 emission levels by 2012; 1990 levels by 2020; and to a level sixty percent below that by 2050.
"As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy," he said. "More likely, however, there will be some companies that need extra emissions rights, and they will be able to buy them. The system to meet these targets and timetables will give these companies extra time to adapt - and that is good economic policy."
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