"Tree Hugger": Obama or McCain?!

Indeed, the environmental platforms of both McCain and Obama are most likely the one issue on which the two presidential candidates share the most similar views. In analyzing the candidate's environmental policies through the classifications set forth by Clapp/Dauvergne in their "4 environmental world views", we see that they both span the borders of the classifications and are thus can be considered a multiple of environmentalists.

McCain: McCain's climate change policy is, mostly, a policy of a market liberal. He bases his env goals on the cap & trade system, in which limits are placed on greenhouse gas emissions and enforced on the market by creating "low-cost compliance" options. These options allow organizations/businesses to buy and sell their ability to emit GHGs, within the limits imposed through the program. Market liberalism and the cap & trade system both tie sustainable development and thus production methods to economic growth and market subsistence. McCain's policy also calls for technological deployment/development through both the cap & trade and also his vow to increase governmental research funding to further tech development that will support cap and trade emissions reductions goals. McCain's program also proposes international efforts to address the env, establishing state/local agencies to oversee the cap & trade program, and incentives to reduce emissions to environmentally damaging countries such as India & China, which are policies that could be considered institutionalist. Nevertheless, the bulk of McCain's program, and the overriding message beneath his environmental campaign stresses the economic stakes in improving the environment, through structures which offer economically feasible and enticing methods of production, and are therefore succint with market liberal theory.

Obama: The pillars of Obama's environmental program are surprisingly similar to those of McCain's, also proposing a cap & trade system in which limits on emissions are tied to economic activity. But much of his campaign, although still very econ-based, is directed towards environmental action and efficiency at the citizen-level, as opposed to McCain's emphasis on improving env efficiency through market-based mechanisms aimed at businesses. Obama seeks to address our env woes through the people by proposing funding for the creation of "new green jobs", offering a windfall profits tax of $1,000 to families facing "pain at the pump", as well as a tax credit for purchasing vehicles enabled with environmentally advanced technology, among others. In addition to this emphasis, Obama stresses the importance of unilateral international action, which he believes would be most effective through a global energy forum which would include the G8 countries and Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa-five other countries with high emission rates following those comprising the G8. This international approach, emphasized much more in the campaign of Obama than that of McCain, has a strong institutionalist connotation. To this end, I would classify Obama as a market institutionalist, by which I mean his program is based on economic methods for economic efficiency, but on an institutionalist platform utilizing citizen action, global action, and technological development as major factors in his plan.

In my opinion, Obama's aforementioned emphasis on citizen and international unilateral action makes the most sense, and seems the most probable to achieving his desired emissions reduction goals as well as improving environmental efficiency in our production methods. I believe that the commercial/market sector, businesses, are concerned primarily with economic incentive, while citizens and those making up the technological or R&D sector are more concerned with our future, and thus the environmental plight of our planet. Putting our env future in the hands of profit-obsessed businesses, in my opinion, is counterproductive because they will only comply if the restrictions imposed are flawless and unable to be surpassed, while trusting that citizens will be more environmentally conscious, even though it uses monetary incentive as colateral, is more likely to reep positive results.