FRESNO, Calif., Sept. 23, 2008
Obama And McCain On Climate Change
CBS Evening News: Breaking Down The Candidates' Stances On Reducing Emissions, Preserving Nature
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Play CBS Video Video Where They Stand: Part Two Where do the presidential candidates stand on climate change? John Blackstone spoke with Jean Pennycook, a penguin researcher in Fresno, CA.
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Video Where They Stand Where do the presidential candidates stand on climate change? John Blackstone spoke with John Fiscalini, a dairy farmer from Modesto, CA.
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Video Candidates On Climate Change Where do the presidential candidates stand on climate change? John Blackstone reports both propose measures that sound the same, but there are differences between them.
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Both the candidates stress the importance of fighting climate change - but each of their policy plans could affect people - and even penguins - differently. (AP)
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Interactive Campaign 2008 Profiles of the candidates, polls, fund-raising, blogs, video and more.
Climate Change
The fourth installment of the series examines where each candidate stands on carbon emissions and the environment.
The fourth installment of the series examines where each candidate stands on carbon emissions and the environment.
Both Candidates:
- Support joining international efforts to curb greenhouse gases and pressing nations like China and India to do the same.
Obama's Plan:
- Would cut greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by 80% by 2050 through a cap and trade program.
- Would charge companies for all emission permits.
McCain's Plan:
- Wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by at least 60% by 2050 through a cap and trade program.
- Would provide emission permits for free and allow companies to sell unused ones.
The Issue
The Adelie penguin colony at Cape Royds, Antarctica, is already feeling the impact of global warming - and that's where CBS News correspondent John Blackstone first met penguin researcher Jean Pennycook earlier this year. She was worried.
"If the ice goes away, these penguins will no longer be able to survive," she said. "So as we see the ice decrease, the penguins will struggle to exist."
When she's not in Antarctica observing the penguins, Pennycook teaches about them in Fresno, Calif.
"So this was more melting than we'd ever seen before - and it was because it was a warmer year," Pennycook said to a class.
She shows her photos of penguins flooded out by fast-melting glaciers. Ice loss in Antarctica has increased by 75 percent in the last dozen years due to global warming.
"How many of you think that to save the penguins, you'd be willing to walk to your friend's house rather than take the car?" she asked her class.
One hundred miles north of Fresno, near Modesto, Calif., John Fiscalini would like to be part of the global-warming solution. But for now his 3,000 cows are part of the problem.
Each cow produces plenty of milk.
"They're basically giving 85 to 100 pounds of milk a day," Fiscalini said.
But cows also make methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The United Nations calculates livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide - even more than cars.
"They have just been escaping up into the environment and contributing to climate change," he said.
So Fiscalini has called in Brian Gannon, who builds methane digesters that capture the gas.
The methane from 300 tons of manure a day will go through a generator making enough electricity to run the whole farm - with power left over to sell to the local utility.
The Candidates
Both presidential candidates are pushing pollution-cutting efforts like these. Just recognizing climate change as an issue is a big change from the past eight years.
Both candidates say they'll join international climate change efforts that the Bush administration has ignored, and will press China and India to cut greenhouse gases.
Back home, both would start with modest greenhouse gas reductions - then increase cutbacks for 40 years into the future.
McCain said while in Santa Barbara: "Until we have achieved at least a reduction of 60 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050."
Obama goes further.
"I've put forward very substantial proposals to get 80 percent reductions in greenhouse gasses by 2050," Obama told CBS News.
Both would reach those goals largely thru a "cap and trade" program that works like this:
"Leadership must begin at home. That's why I've proposed a cap and trade system to limit our carbon emissions and to invest in alternative sources of energy," Obama said in May in Miami.
And McCain, in Santa Barbara, said: "I have proposed a new system of cap-and-trade that over time will change the dynamic of our energy economy."
The candidates sound the same, but there are differences.
McCain would give companies most of the emissions permits for free based on their previous emission levels. Then if they cut back, they can make money selling unused permits.
He said in Portland. "In all its power, the profit motive will suddenly begin to shift and point the other way toward cleaner fuels, wiser ways, and a healthier planet."
Obama would sell all emission permits at auction, so companies would have to pay for every ton of carbon they release. Money raised would be used to develop renewable energy and to subsidize consumers' energy bills.
By one estimate a cap and trade program could raise the average family energy bill more than $700 a year.
In the August, 2007 Democratic primary debate, Obama said: "There are some things that we can do to conserve energy, but all those steps are going to require a little bit of hardship and a little bit of pinching."
The Impact
None of this clean energy comes cheap. Just ask John Fiscalini.
His new generator alone cost $1 million.
"Being the greenest person on the planet and losing money is not going to keep me in my business for very long," he said.Learn more about this issue at Couric & Co. blog.
So he's glad both McCain's and Obama's cap and trade program would give him credit for greenhouse gases he's capturing … so he could sell them to a company that needs more pollution permits.
"I just happen to be one of those people who kind of enjoys being out in front of the pack," he said.
Jean Pennycook knows whoever is elected, the Antarctic ice is unlikely to stop melting anytime soon. But she's relieved the next president won't deny it is happening.
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- I want to vote to the person who will follow this GREAT American idea and concept and return my America to me and my fellow citizens forthwith..."We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles & organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness." Thomas Jefferson
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- Man made climate change will turn out to be the biggest fraud in our history. To think we understand why the earth is/was warming is is arrogant. So why hasn''t the earth''s temperature gone up in the last 7 years? We are consuming more and omitting more greenhouse gasses than ever before. Some places in the world are warming while other are cooling. Do we know why?
Someone needs to explain to me this, I have lived my whole life believing in the scientific fact that there were nine planets in our solar system. Now new scientific facts point to another conclusion. So maybe science isn''t always right. - Reply to this comment
- CNN: Both Obama and Biden twice voted for "bridge to nowhere."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/23/biden.earmarks/index.html - Reply to this comment
- Can''t say that I''m a bible thumper, but I do believe that "God helps those who help themselves". So, if we do nothing, we''re not really helping anyone. And yes, I believe that many of the weather changes are cyclical in nature. But, if things that we (humans) are doing are contributing to the timeframe of that change, we certainly need to back off from Mother Nature and let Her do Her own thing in Her own time. Sometimes, the ego of the human mind simply amazes me. We feel that our "superior knowledge" gives us the right to change what Mother Nature has taken eons to perfect. Humans can, in one generation, make ecological changes that can never be reversed.
Too bad that we lost so much of the tradition of the Native American - living WITH the land. Maybe they could teach us something now. - Reply to this comment
- OneAmerican6, did you read the article? And what,exactly are your credentials for making your observations?
He did read the article, but the article is inaccurate. It is an outright lie. Just because the article said it, doesn''t mean it''s true. Look it up for heavens sake. - Reply to this comment
- From the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. Davis''''s firm, the Washington, D.C. based lobbying firm Davis Manafort, continued to receive $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac.
Why is it that McCain associations are poison while Obama''s are in the past and didn''t really mean anything? - Reply to this comment
- "Climate Change" has become a political football rather than objective science. What can a regular person do to really cut thru all the ***? Oh well...I''ll buy a sweater for global cooling and some shorts for global warming. Boy Scout motto.."Be Prepared!"
- Reply to this comment
- Anybody who tells you that GOD wants us to treat the Earth like a slum landlord would, is lying to you.
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- As of April, this year, permafrost is melting in Siberia, releasing 5 times as much methane as scientists had thought. From one article, "The permafrost has grown porous, says Shakhova, and already the shelf sea has become ''a source of methane passing into the atmosphere.'' The Russian scientists have estimated what might happen when this Siberian permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes. They believe the methane content of the planet''s atmosphere would increase twelvefold. ''The result would be catastrophic global warming,'' say the scientists. The greenhouse-gas potential of methane is 20 times that of carbon dioxide, as measured by the effects of a single molecule."
Not all feedback mechanisms to our planets warming are negative. There''s plenty of evidence that the positive feedbacks (and methane release from melted Arctic permafrost is one of the worst) are sufficient to extinguish all life on earth. Its time to take Global Warming seriously. Past time. - Reply to this comment
- usapride70 said: "As evidenced by the failure to pass the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought back Republican Party efforts to reform the two mortgage banking giants."
So, the minority party blocked legislation wanted by the majority party that was in control of both congress and the white house?
Do you understand what living in a Democracy means? - Reply to this comment
Author Thomas Friedman on Obama's Afghanistan plan and the war on terror.
