Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

John McCain issued a remarkable statement earlier today in response to reports that runaway climate change may have begun:

America this week faces an historic crisis in our climate system. We must pass legislation to address this crisis. If we do not, the Southwest will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. If we do not act, every corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen.

Last spring, I laid out my proposal and I have since discussed my priorities and concerns. Senator Obama has expressed his priorities and concerns. This morning, I met with a group of advisers to talk about the steps that we should take going forward. I have also spoken with members of Congress to hear their perspective.

It has become clear that we are running out of time.

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

I am confident that before Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set politics aside, and I am committed to doing so.

Following September 11th, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis. We must show that kind of patriotism now. Americans across our country lament the fact that partisan divisions in Washington have prevented us from addressing our national challenges. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country.

A blogger can dream, no? I will say that I didn’t have to change very many words from his actual remarks today.

Related Posts:

• Is the financial crisis more dire than the climate crisis?
• Turns out McCain doesn’t care about global warming, the greatest threat we face
• Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us

I have not been blogging on the new tax credit package, since it’s hard to justify getting people’s hopes up over this given how badly the enviros and the Dems messed up on coastal drilling.

But the Senate has passed out a (flawed) tax bill, and now it is in the hands of the House Dems, who have yanked out some of the dirtiest incentives. Here is today E&E Daily piece, which describes the state of play:

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The AP reports:

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in an month-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election….

Democrats had clung to the hope of only a partial repeal of the drilling moratorium, but the White House had promised a veto, Obey said.

Amazing, really. Would Bush have shut down the government before the bailout bill was passed — assuming the Democrats had been smart enough to do the stopgap spending bill (with limits on drilling plus a renewable tax credit extenstion) first?

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If you follow peak oil — and if you don’t, you will be bitchslapped by reality — then you know of Matt Simmons. I was introduced to him several years ago by my former boss at the Energy Department. Back then Simmons was merely one of the savviest financier in the oil services business, who was presciently warning all who would listen that natural gas supplies in this country would not respond quickly to increased prices and thus we should expect some serious price spikes.

Today he is “The prophet of $500 oil” as Fortune described him Monday. Yet, long before he published his 2005 book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, he was a “lifelong Republican” who “helped edit the Bush campaign’s comprehensive energy plan in the 2000 election.” The word “comprehensive” of course is a laughable term that I’m sure even Simmons would mock today for a plan that focused almost exclusively on supply.

Still, Simmons remains well connected to Republicans: “Maine’s Senator Susan Collins, a Republican who recently began consulting with Simmons on energy issues, says, “I think he’s issuing a clarion call that policymakers need to listen to.”

Simmons was right about natural gas, and he appears to be (mostly) right about peak oil (see below), so the nation should listen closely when he speaks truth to power about his party’s own nominee:

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Lobbying for his plan to sharply ramp up renewables, the billionaire oilman has been brought face to face with the Big Energy Lie — the absurd notion that either John McCain or the Republicans in Congress actually believe in an “all of the above” energy policy.

In my interview with Pickens last month, he was able to offer only the blandest reply to a question pointing out that Dems back renewables but the GOP doesn’t: “So let me ask you, how do we, how do we get Republicans to support that kind of investment in renewables.” See his rambling answer here “Pickens in a pickle: He embraces progressive policies but not progressive politicians.”

TP reports on a sadder but wiser (and far more cogent) Pickens at the National Press Club yesterday:

Q: You told the New York Times last month that you’d never vote for a Democrat. Are you finding that difficult in reaching out to Democrats then with your plan? [...]

PICKENS: So I am having no problem working with the Democrats. Having a little problem working with the Republicans. They don’t like it because I want to do more than just drill. And they, somehow have gotten it, a lot of them have, that you can drill your way out of this. But you can’t do it. There’s not enough oil there to do it.

I guess he missed the GOP convention, see “Drill baby, drill”: The moment the Republic died.

You can see the video of Pickens here:

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The site for baseball-style statistical analysis applied to polling, FiveThirtyEight.com, finds:

Obama has developed a structural advantage in the Electoral College that is understated by the popular vote margin. If we break the election down into its four fundamental scenarios, it looks like this:

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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is an avowed climate science believer who comes from a state with enough solar resource to power the entire nation. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) is an avowed climate science denier who comes from a major oil patch state.

So why has McCain voted with Inhofe and against clean energy and the environment a staggering 42 out of 44 times since the mid-1990s? And that doesn’t even include eight straight votes on extending the renewable energy tax credits that McCain missed in the last year, where he would have sided with Inhofe and against a clean energy future.

The answer is that “Few politicians in history have more successfully sold a phony image about caring for the environment than Sen. John McCain” — which is the central point of my new Salon piece, “John McCain’s hot air.” The facts are clear: McCain is at best an out-of-touch green washer and at worst simply a pathological liar.

For instance, at an Aspen Institute meeting in August, when McCain was asked about those missed votes, he simply lied to the audience:

I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. I come from a state where we have sunshine 360 days a year…. I’ve always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote.

As for McCain’s “long record of that support of alternate energy,” consider the votes on renewable energy funding and a federal “renewable portfolio standard” (RPS) that he did show up for this decade:

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Hopes that the Air Force would abandon CTL may have been premature. There is a backdoor approach in the works. According to Politico,

Democrats have all but pushed coal out of the clean energy debates, but the coal lobby might have found a new tap into the U.S. Treasury: the Pentagon.

The Defense Authorization Bill now being debated in the Senate includes a provision that would allow energy companies to sign 10-year contracts with the military to produce synthetic fuel.

The article goes on to describe the history behind the coal-to-liquids push at the Air Force. It quotes former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne as saying:

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