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the green lantern: Illuminating answers to environmental questions.

Clinton, Obama, and McCainWhich candidate has the most green cred?

By Brendan I. Koerner
Updated Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 7:43 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

So, to answer your pointed question, who has more green cred? The Lantern hates to waffle, but it's really a matter of how you regard your own environmental leanings. Clinton's plan offers more red meat for stats geeks (whose ranks include your humble narrator), but Obama's is slightly more visionary. Neither is perfect, given their knee-jerk affinity for biofuels and clean coal, but such is the nature of politics.

Comparing the two leading Democrats with the presumptive Republican is tough, since McCain hasn't released a comprehensive environmental platform. All we can go by at present is this page from his Web site, which is full of sweet platitudes but woefully short on specifics. Given the lack of crunchiness among his base, McCain generally avoids any language that might smack of "Save the Whales" do-goodism. He instead favors variations on the concept of "stewardship," a catchphrase popular among admirers of Theodore Roosevelt as well as climate change skeptics.

Based on his record in the Senate, McCain seems mildly green. He co-sponsored the 2003 Climate Stewardship Act, the first Senate bill to propose a cap-and-trade system, and he's been very clear about his personal belief that, yes, human beings are causing the planet's climate to go haywire.

But critics point out that McCain's cap-and-trade bill eventually morphed into this, which is much less ambitious than what either Obama or Clinton is proposing: The retitled Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007 would reduce American carbon emissions to 30 percent of their 2004 levels by 2050. The revamped act also includes large subsidies for nuclear power, with much of the money coming from the auction of pollution credits. (An in-depth, skeptical assessment of McCain's environmental record is here.)

There's a good chance that McCain is waiting until his Democratic opponent is determined to release a detailed environmental plan. Until that happens, though, the Lantern will give McCain's barebones platform a solid C-minus, while the two Democrats get shaky Bs for their meticulous plans.

Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to , and check this space every Tuesday.

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Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for Gizmodo. His first book, Now the Hell Will Start, is out now.
Photograph of Hillary Clinton by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; Barack Obama by Win McNamee/Getty Images; John McCain by Joshua Lott/Getty Images.
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