McCain to Highlight Differences With Bush on Environment

Senator John McCain sought to straddle the divide between environmentalists and the energy industry on Tuesday, calling for conservation but also more refineries, more nuclear power plants and the end of a ban on oil drilling off the nation’s coasts.
Mr. McCain’s central message, derided by Senator Barack Obama in a day of political attacks and counter-attacks by the two campaigns, was that he was not President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney, and that he would not pursue the environmental policies of his two fellow Republicans in the unpopular administration.

“John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming five years ago,” said the narrator in a television commercial released on Tuesday by Mr. McCain’s campaign. “Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions.”

In a speech he was scheduled to deliver to an audience of oil industry executives in Houston at 4 p.m. Central time, Mr. McCain implicitly criticizes Mr. Cheney, who dismissed conservation as a “personal virtue” in 2001. Mr. McCain was to say that the next president would have to break with the policies of the current and past administrations to free the United States from its dependence on foreign oil.

“In the face of climate change and other serious challenges, energy conservation is no longer just a moral luxury or a personal virtue,” Mr. McCain planned to say. “Conservation serves a critical national goal.”

His campaign made excerpts of the prepared text of his speech available to reporters in the morning, and the full text in the early afternoon.

Mr. Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee relentlessly mocked Mr. McCain throughout the day for what they called his flip-flopping and capitulation to the oil industry. Mr. Obama’s campaign swiftly pointed out, for example, that Mr. McCain had supported the ban on offshore drilling during his run for the presidency in 2000.

“John McCain’s support of the moratorium on offshore drilling during his first presidential campaign was certainly laudable, but his decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.

The pitched criticism was a sign of how central the energy issue promises to be in the general election this fall.

Mr. McCain concentrated much of his attention on his plans for increasing energy supply, including lifting the ban on new offshore oil exploration in states that wanted it lifted — welcome news for the oil industry, which has long supported lifting the ban. Mr. McCain first let his position on the moratorium be known on Monday.

“With gasoline running at more than four bucks a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians,” Mr. McCain planned to say. “We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production, and I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.”

In his prepared remarks, Mr. McCain touched on predictions from some market analysts that crude oil prices will top $200 a barrel before too long, and that gasoline will soar to $7 a gallon at the pump.

“Somehow the United States, in so many ways the most self-reliant of nations, has allowed and at times even encouraged this state of affairs,” Mr. McCain was to say. “This was a troubling situation 35 years ago. It was an alarming situation twenty years ago. It is a dangerous situation today.”

Mr. Obama comes in for criticism in Mr. McCain’s prepared remarks, for supporting a windfall profit taxes on oil, which Mr. McCain says would hinder oil exploration. “If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because that was President Jimmy Carter’s big idea too, and a lot of good it did us,” Mr. McCain was to say.

For its part, the Democratic National Committee characterized Mr. McCain’s speech as “more of the same failed Bush policies that have driven energy prices through the roof.”

Mr. McCain also plans to renew his call for new nuclear power plants in the United States, which has not built one since the 1970’s. “One nation today has plans to build almost 50 new reactors by 2020,” Mr. McCain was to say. “Another country plans to build 26 major nuclear stations. A third nation plans to build enough nuclear plants to meet one quarter of all the electricity needs of its people a population of more than a billion people. Those three countries are China, Russia, and India. And if they have the vision to set and carry out great goals in energy policy, then why don’t we?”