McCain rips Bush record on warming

by Dave Keating | May 13, 2008 at 01:16 am

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Now that he has spent the last few months courting his party's base with promises on conservative pet issues such as remaining in Iraq what kind of supreme court justices he would appoint, McCain has turned to courting independents and moderate Democrats with a push on environmental issues.

Having already attempted to establish some distance between himself and George W. Bush by criticising the president's handling of HUrricane Katrina, he is now criticising the president's handling of environmental issues and global warming.

McCain surely has his eye on the fact that the Democratic primary race is now coming to a close. The strategy is quite shrewd. As he's outlined his most conservative policy stances over the past few months, independents and moderate Democrats have been distracted by the Democratic primary. Now that that is wrapping up and these moderates turn to McCain, their first impression of him will be on these moderate issues, and his conservative push will have escaped their notice.

John McCain launched a green-tinted courtship of West Coast swing voters on Monday, with a call to action on global warming and an indictment of the Bush administration's "failed" policies to combat it.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee visited the wind-power technology firm Vestas, near Portland International Airport, to decry melting polar ice, vanishing glaciers, changes in animal migration and "rising temperatures and waters," all products, he said, of a reliance on fossil fuels that threatens America's economy and security.

McCain championed nuclear power and warned that China and India must take steps to curb their own rising carbon emissions. "The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention," McCain said, "particularly in Washington."