If McCain cares about the environment, why does he oppose renewable energy?
McCain consistently has voted consistently against government support of solar, wind, geothermal, bioenergy, ocean and any other clean energy, with the exception of being strongly for nuclear power.
McCain believes that clean energy like solar and wind are ineffective against climate change. McCain has many times expressed his sincere belief that only nuclear power can reduce greenhouse gases.
McCain refuses to support any carbon cap and trade legislation unless it contains massive nuclear subsidies - more than any other senators are willing to support.
On environmental legislation, McCain voted with James 'Oil Man Global Warming is a Hoax' Inhofe 42 out of 44 times, and with Barbara Boxer (most environmentally conscious senator) 1 out of 50 times.
http://www.matternetwork.com/2008/9/mccains-50-votes-against-clean.cfm
McCain has also missed 8 straight votes on extending the renewable energy tax credit, and would have voted against it had he attended.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/20/the-greenwasher-from-arizona-has-a-record-as-dirty-as-the-denier-from-oklahoma/
How can we believe that McCain is concerned about the environment as he claims:
"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."
When his voting record is exactly the opposite of his claims? Do you buy into McCain's claim that he cares about the environment? Why or why not?
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February 18th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I don’t buy into McCain’s claim at all, McCain has absolutely no solid history of supporting truly clean energy sources. I agree with all of the sources that you have selected pointing to the fact that John S. McCain does not really care about the environment except to get votes. It is clearly the trend for politicians to say that they care about the environment in order to win, if any politician runs on a policy that completely ignores the environment they will surely lose. McCain’s positions are for show and are only because this is an election year.
There is one thing that I disagree with that you said, it is that bio-energy is a clean energy source. Bio energy is only a clean energy source when it comes from our waste products, such as vegetable oil from restaurants or biological waste generated from food or other sources. If we go and take corn and turn that into fuel, we are reducing the amount of food available to the world as well was creating more pollutants such as fertilizer and pesticides in order to grow enough corn to feed our fuel needs as well as the world. If you make the calculation for the conversion of all of the corn we produce in the United States into ethanol, we would only be able to cover 1/5 of our needs for transportation, this does not even cover for our needs in electricity generation.
The calculation:
13000000000 bushels of corn produced every year
2.85gal ethanol per bushel
37050000000 gallons of ethanol a year
210435275000 motor gasoline used in the United states each year
37050000000/210435275000 = .17 -> 17% of transportation needs met
this is under the false assumption that ethanol is just as efficient or even more efficient than gasoline.