McCain delivers climate remarks at foreign wind company(McCain has repeatedly opposed a renewable en

Conservative presidential candidate Sen. John McCain chose a clever, but ultimately hypocritical location for his big climate speech. I hope the media aren’t fooled by his ironic choice of wind turbine company Vestas as the backdrop, but I have little doubt they will run enticing photos and videos of wind turbines. McCain, however, does not deserve to be linked to such images.

Let’s be clear — conservatives like John McCain, or more accurately, conservatives including John McCain, are the main reason McCain has to go to a Danish wind turbine manufacturer to give a climate speech. With the major government investments in wind in the 1970s, the United States was poised to be a dominant player in what was clearly going to be one of the biggest job creating industries of the next hundred years. But conservatives repeatedly gutted the wind budget, then opposed efforts by progressives to increase it, and repeatedly blocked efforts to extend the wind power tax credit. The sad result can be seen here:




In December, McCain himself failed to show up for a key vote that would have extended the wind power production tax credit, which has been a key driver of wind power in this country — allowing it to compete with our better-subsidized power sources (like nuclear) in this country, and to partly offset the much bigger subsidies other countries have for renewables. The vote would have shifted money from subsidies to the oil industry, which hardly needs it given record oil prices and record oil profits (see “How high must oil go before we end subsidies?“)

McCain’s vote could have broken the conservative filibuster blocking the effort to support renewables, since the clean energy tax package failed 59-40, but his spokesperson said that “he would not have supported breaking the filibuster.” This was but one recent example of a series of missed votes or anti-renewable votes McCain has cast in recent years.


As the Center for American Progress documented, McCain has repeatedly opposed a renewable electricity standard that would have set a minimum requirement for utilities to generate part of their power from sources like wind. Half the states have such requirements, a key reason the industry has not died out entirely in this country. Most European countries have such requirements, a key reason their countries had become leaders.

http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/12/anti-wind-mccain-delivers-climate-remarks-at-foreign-wind-company-part-i/

Republics hates them some renewable energy - always have - always will...