Tom Loeffler

On Monday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) unveiled an “incoherent” global warming plan at the North American headquarters of the Danish wind turbine company Vestas. McCain has justified his long and active opposition to federal support for the domestic wind industry by claiming it “is doing fine.” In his speech Monday, McCain praised wind power for “changing our economy for the better” and said:

When we debate energy bills in Washington, it should be more than a competition among industries for special favors, subsidies, and tax breaks. In the Congress, we need to send the special interests on their way — without their favors and subsidies.

Yesterday, the Wonk Room noted that his top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, disagrees with McCain’s rosy assessment of the wind industry, saying that it needs federal support because “he would want to make sure that we did not at this point in time stop the wind and solar from progressing.”

In fact, two of McCain’s top advisers have been directly involved in stopping the wind industry from progressing, by lobbying against the construction of the first offshore wind farm in the United States — the Cape Wind project proposed for Massachusetts’s Nantucket Sound:

Charlie Black, Senior Political Adviser to McCain: Senate lobbying disclosure documents reveal that lobbying firm BKSH & Associates was retained in January 2008 by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound to “Defeat the proposal for 130 wind turbines” and “promote alternative means to meet energy needs without sacrificing Nantucket Sound.” Charlie Black was the chairman of BKSH until March. [Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database]

Tom Loeffler, McCain’s Campaign Co-chairman: The Loeffler Group received $380,000 from the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound from 2003 to 2005 to lobby against Cape Wind. The Loeffler Group was founded by former Republican congressman Tom Loeffler, who remains its chairman. [Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database]

McCain is now selling “eco-friendly” campaign items on his website. But all the bamboo T-shirts in the world can’t hide McCain’s true priorities.

(HT: Energy Smart.)

Wind power is a key climate solution. It is one of the few zero-carbon supply options that can plausibly provide more than one of the 14 or so “wedges” we need to stabilize below 450 ppm of CO2 (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 2: The Solution“). I plan to go through all of the major solutions this year on the blog.

The stunning new Bush administration report, 20% Wind Energy by 2030 (discussed here), convinced me it was time to write a long piece, which has just been published in Salon. The article–”Winds of change: The U.S. can greatly boost clean wind power for 2 cents a day. Now all we need is a president who won’t blow the chance.“– explains the more than 2,000-year history of wind power, how conservatives cost America the chance to be the world wind leader, and why the global industry is so successful in spite of our government’s relative apathy:

From 2000 to 2007, the industry increased fivefold in size. Last year, $36 billion in wind investments were made around the world, with $9 billion invested in U.S.-based projects. In 10 years, it is expected to nearly quadruple in size.

Yes, I know, most of the media attention goes to a few high-visibility debates about putting wind in places like the waters off Cape Cod. But most installations are a welcome source of revenue to farmers and landowners. In fact, because the new wind turbines are tall, and don’t interfere significantly with grazing or farming, they have become popular in the central U.S., where the wind resource is best in the country. Some ranchers make half a million dollars a year by leasing only a fraction of their land for turbines.

Surprisingly, the top state for wind farms is no longer California as of 2006:

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