Intellectual Property Law

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain is scheduled to discuss the specifics of his position on global climate change Monday, as well as his support for a bipartisan landmark climate change bill currently moving through congress.

"This is an area ... where John McCain differs pretty substantially from the (Bush) administration," said McCain's chief surrogate and economic adviser Carly Fiorina on Sunday political talk show "This Week with George Stephanopoulos. "I think what John McCain has always said, whether it's the cap and trade legislation that he has supported and sponsored with Joe Lieberman, or this current bill, what he has always said is that the United States must take a leadership role in addressing climate change and global warming."

"We must apply some of the disciplines of the private marketplace to spur innovation in this area as well as to incent companies to do better," she added.

The move marks a shift toward a general election messaging strategy as McCain speaks on a subject that's important to suburban swing voters -- although polls consistently show that the environment ranks near the bottom of voters' list of concerns generally, trailing their worries about the economy, the war in Iraq, terrorism, healthcare, education and illegal immigration.

During the brief Sunday morning interview, Fiorina repeatedly tried to distance McCain from the Bush administration's policies. Both the Democratic National Committee and independent left-leaning groups are branding a potential McCain presidency as an extension of the Bush administration's, whose approval ratings with voters has sunk to historic lows.

As Stephanopolous noted during his show, McCain's support for S.2191, America?s Climate Security Act of 2007, is in direct opposition to the Bush administration, which blasted it earlier this year at a US Chamber of Commerce meeting. The bill has met with a mixed reaction from environmental advocates.

McCain touted his environmental record in a visit to Democratic stronghold  New Jersey on Friday. He reminded voters of his long-time efforts to push through his own carbon emissions bill with senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

This latest carbon-emissions bill goes further than the McCain-Lieberman bill because it has set more aggressive goals for reducing those emissions.

The senate legislation seeks to limit the emission of greenhouse gases from electric utilities, transportation and the manufacturing industry. The bill's sponsors want to reduce carbon emissions by about 65 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

The legislation was first introduced last October and approved in modified form by the senate committee on the environment and public works in December. The full senate is scheduled to debate the legislation in June. Meanwhile, the House is working on a companion bill.

In its current form, the bill would also not pre-empt state-enacted rules, like California's, and would offer incentives for states to act early.

California's legislation, enacted in 2006, seeks to reduce the state's emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Fiorina discussed the climate change issue in a wide-ranging interview with Stephanopolous. They also covered McCain's support for the so-called gas-tax holiday, banning abortion as a constitutional amendment with no exceptions, and the off-shoring of corporate profits to minimize their US tax liabilities.

During the interview, Fiorina said that she couldn't name a credible economist who supports the idea of a gas tax holiday.

"I don't think it matters. I'm a business person," she said, saying that economists' arguments are too theoretical, and don't address the everyday budgetary realities facing Americans.

Stephanopoulos pushed back by pointing out that the proposal could end up costing $9 billion and eliminating 300,000 jobs, a point at which Fiorina tried to change the subject by saying that lost revenues could possibly be made up by eliminating funding for congress people's pet state projects.

Fiorina dodged the question about the GOP's policy platform of enacting a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion, simply saying that McCain supports using stem cells for research.

Stephanopoulos also asked about ending tax breaks for US companies that keep their profits abroad in order to avoid having to pay US taxes, something Barack Obama has made part of his policy platform.

Fiorina argued that the US needs to compete against other countries' tax regimes in a global economy.

"The way it works today is if you choose to bring cash back into this country you have to pay a tax rate that is the second highest in the world," she said. "We are now competing around the world for jobs. So if you want a company to put jobs here, you have to have a tax rate that's competitive globally. Ours isn't any more."

See Also:

• Of GOP Candidates, Geeks Hate McCain The Least
• Gore and UN Panel Wins Nobel -- Prez Candidates Jump on the ...
• White House Spins IPCC Climate Change Report
• China Releases National Climate Change Plan
• Bush Talks the Talk on Climate Change
• Climate Change Bigwigs Tell Congress about Fudged Science
• Climate Change Chokes Oceans
• Only Greentech Can Save US Economy, Says Über-Investor
• New High-Res Map of US Per-Capita CO2 Emissions
• China's 2030 CO2 Emissions Could Equal the Entire World's Today
• No US Climate Change Policy Coming Soon, Say Venture Capitalists