Immigration, campaign finance, tax cuts, Gang of 14 - if there is any one thing that ticks me off the most about John McCain (whom I do support for President now), it's surprisingly his public policy positions on global warming.
First, a disclaimer: To put it bluntly, I am highly skeptical of the theory of man-made global warming, as you can view in my blog entry here. My interest here is in addressing McCain's global warming position, which I find to be both dangerous and unnecessary. But let us assume for the moment that global warming is real (and by "global warming" I mean global warming caused in large part by man).
John McCain and Joe Lieberman joined forces in an attempt to push through the McCain-Lieberman bill which would have put caps on carbon emissions. If global warming is real and steps need to be taken to combat it, then government intervention, which McCain supports, is unnecessary. I say this because businesses and individuals are already taking steps toward the goal of a cleaner environment and new technologies to combat against such things as global warming and dependence on foreign oil.
Why are businesses doing this? Because of profit motive. If there's any one thing beneficial that's come from the global warming craze, it's that individuals are paying more attention to their environment. In order to play into these ideas, businesses are using profit motive to research and implement new technologies. In other words, businesses are taking the initiative themselves, without government intervention, in effect proving that it is unnecessary.
Now, if you believe that action needs to be taken more quickly, then government involvement should come in the form of an incentive prize for the first company to do X, whatever X is. What will happen is that company will develop THE technology to beat and take it out into the market. Other companies will then try to replicate it to remain competitive with the first company, spreading the technology further. The government could also work to help open up more refineries and drilling in the country to combat our dependence on foreign oil. This is another way that command-and-control regulations on carbon emissions and the like are unnecessary and could be replaced with an alternative government policy.
Government regulations regarding carbon emissions and the like are most certainly unnecessary if global warming is unreal, but these regulations are almost equally unnecessary if global warming is real. Furthermore, by instituting the regulations that McCain and the Democrats wish to put in place, the government would be putting both unnecessary and harmful strain on businesses to do what the government tells them to do for, in the case of global warming being unreal, a nonexistent crisis., and in the case of global warming being real, something which businesses are dealing with themselves.
But we're talking about climate here, people, not the temperature changes of a house. There are so many things that go into the climate and its changes that to pin it on one thing is silly, first of all, and second of all, it shows that, when it comes to public policy decisions, we need to be careful about how we go about dealing with these issues. Rushing to judgment and deciding, "Ope, we need to cap carbon emissions big time" or "Ope, we need to force an increase in car efficiency standards" could yield tremendously harmful repercussions in terms of the economic side of things in particular, and when there are doubts about the science of the claims - as there are, despite what the media and teachers try to tell you - there is cause to be especially careful with these decisions.
Given those things and the fact that businesses are already stepping up themselves without government intervention, it is clear to me that the McCain, Obama, and Clinton policies on dealing with this supposed "crisis" have the potential to drive the American economy to the ground and, perhaps even more impactual and dangerous, set a new, precarious precedent for the future.
I can see it now. "My fellow politicians, scientists are saying that Process X is happening. Look what we did to deal with global warming. Now we should do this now." It sets a dangerous precedent for the government to come out in the future and say, "Hey, we've got this problem. Look what we did to deal with global warming. Let's put more regulations and so forth on businesses now to deal with this problem. That, to me, would drive us in the utterly wrong direction.
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