Big Boost For Climate Change: Graham Backs McCain's Effort

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, joined his close friend John McCain on the Senate floor on Thursday to declare his support for climate-change legislation. The backing of the conservative Graham gives a major boost to the effort and indicates that McCain, after shying away form the issue during the presidential campaign, has returned to it with full force.

Graham and McCain are longtime friends with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the sponsor of a prior climate-change bill with McCain. In 2008, McCain took his name off the bill and Lieberman wrote it with now-retired-Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Warner's departure left the possibility of a bipartisan bill in question.

But the answer from Graham and McCain is a clear one.

Graham's support of an effort to reduce greenhouse gases was couched in the same terms that McCain uses: Even if the science is wrong, the argument goes, addressing climate change reduces our dependence on Middle East oil and is therefore a national security issue. "If you're serious about energy independence as a nation, it would be good to get away from fossil fuels coming from the Mideast," Graham said.

"The idea that what we put into the environment can affect our environment--I'm not a scientist, but that's common sense to me," said Graham. "The worst thing that could happen with the climate-change debate is you cleaned up your planet and you passed on a better environment to your grandchildren."

Graham spoke highly of a prior cap-and-trade system that addressed acid rain and which is often cited as a model for future climate-change law. Acid rain is reality. It was a reality. You could see it in the Southeast," said Graham. "And it was a cap-and-trade system, a new technology that solved that problem. So it's not much of a stretch to me that the CO2 carbon emissions that we're putting into our environment from transportation and power production is heating up the planet. But we can have that debate."

Graham and McCain both said their support of bipartisan legislation had several conditions, citing the need for investment in so-called "clean coal" as well as nuclear power. They also insisted that any effort to sidestep a filibuster by using the budget reconciliation process would erode the bipartisan support.

Earlier Thursday, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said no decision on whether to use reconciliation had yet been made.

"That's certainly not the change that anybody envisioned. That would be a radical departure in terms of how reconciliation has been used in the past," said Graham. "That would be the politics of the past on steroids."

Comments

[BrianJDonovan]

06:59 PM on 03/20/2009

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[hopefulinpa]

01:09 PM on 03/20/2009

I am with you mcantwell!

[Human-Being]

11:36 AM on 03/20/2009

People once argued that the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that pollution wasn't the cause of the eagle disappeari­ng.

Now people are arguing over our planet like it was replaceabl­e. Who in their right mind is willing to place bets that it is?

If the nonbelieve­rs are wrong, we wasted years that could have stopped a catastroph­e.

If the believers are wrong we end up with a cleaner planet.

I'm not willing to gamble with my progeny's future. But it sure looks like some are willing to put everybody'­s at risk... just to prove a point?

[StanlyManly]

01:44 PM on 04/12/2009

Your argument fails because you assume CO2 is somehow dirty.

The plant life on the planet would disagree with you.

Oh and what eagles are disappeari­ng? Certainly not the bald eagle, they are increasing in population­. Heck, back in 2000, most states stopped even taking counts, because the population had been growing steadily since 1963. Hmm... now theres an interestin­g dilema... population­s of species increasing­... CO2 increasing­... what could the correlatio­n possibly be?

[realpolitic]

11:22 AM on 03/20/2009

Graham says "even if the science is wrong!" I guess that is a throwaway line to his base that does not believe in science. They must still think the sun and wind gods control the atmosphere­.

[countfloyd]

10:41 AM on 03/20/2009

Clean coal is a joke but you know how Europe has been able to reduce CO2 emissions; nuclear power. France is building new plants right now and has been operating them since the 70s. Building new plants here would also create a lot of jobs. That doesn't mean we should stop pushing for solar and wind and other clean methods to hopefully close the plants at the first opportunit­y but we need to change the CO2 equation quickly.

[jsgaetano]

03:12 PM on 03/20/2009

Replacing CO2 emmissions with nuclear waste isn't a very intelligen­t trade-off. Especially considerin­g it takes at least a decade to build a nuclear power plant.

We can be up and running with renewable energy after a few years, and windmills or solar panels don't have an expiration date... unlike nuclear power plants.

[Bambaya]

04:42 PM on 03/26/2009

One thing people don't realize is that nuclear power is cleaner than thermo electrical power generation that is based on combustion but the problem with nuclear power is that you have to deal with the nuclear waste. The nuclear waste even when properly buried takes one thousand years to dissipate all radioactiv­ity. France had many colonies in Africa and I consider that a crime that they export all the waste to those African countries where almost 70% of the population is illiterate and living below poverty. This is one planet and the stupid decisions we take can have the effect of a boomerang.

[113]

02:35 AM on 03/20/2009

So in effect they are holding our planet hostage so that they can get what they want....th­ey are saying that they won't support a bill that addresses climate change unless it has what they want in it ("clean" coal, which doesn't exist, and nuclear power....o­ld technology­) ......sad.

[trimom]

01:02 AM on 03/20/2009

This is just a lame attempt to divert us from actual clean technologi­es and an effective cap-and-tr­ade program. Be very afraid of these men and pay attention to the details. They are trying to pull a fast one.

[Yermammy]

12:09 AM on 03/20/2009

Something tells me Lindsay would "back" anything for Johnny the plane wrecker. "John's a manly man!" says Lindsay with adulation in his fawning eyes.

It's about time to ignore the Flat Earth Society Rethugs. They are the monkeys that aren't evolving.

[walk0nwalls]

09:23 PM on 03/19/2009

While a boon, Graham and McCain are BFFFs, who really ddidn't think this was going to happen?

[grf67]

07:24 PM on 03/19/2009

Interestin­g. I wonder how many pages of the legislatio­n either of them read? I also wonder how many of those pages that they understood­. Science is pretty much beyond republican­s.

[Layman23]

07:00 PM on 03/19/2009

Was it one of those "Thank God John Came Back !!! " ?

[wtheman]

06:43 PM on 03/19/2009

What happened to drill, baby, drill? I thought that was the republican mantra.

[VikingQuest]

06:33 PM on 03/19/2009

So how exactly is there a "big boost for climate change" unless somehow Washington can legislate us to actually control our climate?

I have no idea what these people are talking about when they believe we can control the climate . . . a cap & trade system really doesn't do anything but lower our GDP, raise our prices and shift the burdon overseas . . . It's like shoveling snow onto your neighbor's driveway.

[marinade]

08:08 PM on 03/19/2009

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

There's a cost associated with CO2 production­. Humans need to start paying for it.

[VikingQuest]

10:10 PM on 03/19/2009

What is that cost?

You are saying if we stopped emitting CO2 that what would happen? What would the climate be then?

[Hawka]

08:10 PM on 03/19/2009

We screw up nature pretty bad most of the freaking time, I don't see why the climate is so beyond your grasp of understand­ing...

[VikingQuest]

10:09 PM on 03/19/2009

Limiting pollution and controllin­g the climate are teo very different things . . .

[brandnewstuff]

06:02 PM on 03/19/2009

ditto heads!

[tailgateshirts]

05:52 PM on 03/19/2009

Yea god forbid we dont turn America into Beijing