Has McCain’s environmental ‘halo’ been lost for good?

Articles — By forcechange on September 9, 2008 5:00 am

It seems that at least for the remainder of the campaign, McCain has decided to move even further away from his maverick reputation with respect to environmental policy, and to fully embrace a stance aimed at tapping into a more hardcore conservative voter base. 

According to Dateline Earth at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last week, McCain did not mention the terms “climate change,” “global warming” or even “environment” a single time! 

It seems the closest McCain got to these issues was in the following excerpt from his speech:

We’ll produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells off-shore, and we’ll drill them now. We’ll drill them now.

We’ll — we’ll — my friends, we’ll build more nuclear power plants. We’ll develop clean-coal technology. We’ll increase the use of wind, tide, solar, and natural gas. We’ll encourage the development and use of flex-fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.

Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that.

We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet.

This sad fact tells us a few things about McCain and his party’s hardcore base.  First, McCain knew what topics his core audience wanted to hear about, and concerns about global warming and the environment were not on the list.  Second, not only is McCain minimizing environmental topics that he previously championed (e.g., governmental regulation of carbon emissions), but he has fully embraced the opposite policy, to wit, an almost religious like dedication to drilling.  As TheDailyGreen notes, McCain’s “halo hangover” from his 2003 efforts to legislate regulations on carbon emissions may actually be erased for good.