McCain: Gore's Challenge Is 'Doable'

July 18, 2008 12:06 p.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) expressed support on Thursday for the goal of producing all of the nation's electricity using renewable energy sources within a decade. The challenge was made earlier by former Vice President Al Gore to current and future elected officials.

"I've admired the vice president on this issue," McCain said, according to CNN. "There may be some aspects of climate change that he and I are in disagreement on but overall - I mean, I've always been a supporter of nuclear power and he has not agreed with that."

"If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable," he added, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

McCain, a maverick Republican who has a mixed record on the environment, has proposed to double the number of nuclear reactors in the U.S. and build 45 new ones by 2030. His nuclear energy plan is part of a larger agenda called the Lexington Project which includes ending the ban on offshore oil drilling and providing a $300 million prize to whoever develops the best hybrid car battery. The four-term senator is also pushing for a cap-and-trade reform that will let rural businesses receive market-based payments instead of government subsidies as rewards for reduced carbon emissions. He wants to decrease emissions to 2005 levels by 2012, and by 1990 levels by 2020.

Recent efforts by his campaign to distance him from President George W. Bush's climate change policies have been unsuccessful. A TV ad launched earlier this month saying, "John McCain stood up to the President and sounded the alarm on global warming five years ago," was lost in the noise surrounding Bush's call for Congress to lift the ban on coastal oil exploration.

Gore issued his challenge during a speech on Thursday at Washington's Constitution Hall, saying the goal of 100 percent carbon-free energy is "achievable and affordable." He argued that it is the very same thing the nation needs in order to revive the economy as well as to ensure security against threats from the Middle East.

The 2000 Democratic nominee and Nobel Prize winner also decried the Bush Administration's plan to end the ban on offshore oil drilling and refusal to agree to a multilateral clean energy plan without the commitments of China and India.

"It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now," the former vice president said. "We are in the midst of an international climate treaty process that will conclude its work before the end of the first year of the new president's term. It is a great error to say that the United States must wait for others to join us in this matter. In fact, we must move first."

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who was endorsed by Gore last month, accepted the challenge the same day and repeated his opposition to McCain's drilling plan.

McCain responded by saying, "Let me just say again, Sen. Obama, no storage and no reprocess. And that's nuclear power. No drilling offshore. That's a way of finding oil and gas reserves. Dr. No."