Subject: [big campaign] Tracking Update: McCain Speech on Energy Security Las Vegas, NV
From: "Cammie Croft" <[email-masked]>
To: "big campaign" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:22:15 -0400
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Hi All,

Just off the phone with our tracker Andres who is on the ground in Las
Vegas, NV today.  Below are the notes from our call and a copy of McCain's
full remarks.
*
**Las Vega, NV - McCain Speech on Energy Security*

*Background Details:
*- President of UNLV gave opening remarks
- Lieutenant Governor Brian Krolicki introduced McCain
- Room fairly small, seating room only
- Audience approximately 150-200 in size
- The event was more formal; many dressed up; older, white crowd
- Surprisingly few college students despite event being at a university
- Usual press -- national, traveling, local affiliates
- Well staffed by campaign

*FULL Remarks:
*LINK: <http://thepage.time.com/excerpts-of-mccains-vegas-speech/>
http://thepage.time.com/full-remarks-of-mccains-vegas-energy-speech/

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain will deliver the following remarks
as prepared for delivery in Las Vegas, NV, today at 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30
p.m. EDT):

Thank you all very much. It's good to be here in Las Vegas, and I appreciate
your inviting me to speak about America's energy problems. Some might think
Vegas an unlikely setting for a discourse touching on energy conservation.
And in the interest of brevity, I'll just skip the part about air
conditioning and neon lighting.

Political campaigns have a way of settling on a few great questions, with
little regard for the expectations of pundits, and even less concern for the
carefully crafted strategies of the candidates themselves. These questions
are rarely easy. Politicians usually avoid them for just that reason. And so
it is good when events intrude on the familiar routine of stale soundbites,
staged rallies, and over-managed messages, and turn to the concerns of the
people themselves. In this election, the price and security of energy in
America is one of those great questions.

It is an urgent question because the rising price of oil has brought
hardship to our country, and threatens to bring much more. Gasoline at well
over four dollars a gallon is bad enough all by itself, but it also affects
the price of everything else. The cost of living is rising. The value of
paychecks is falling. Many of our citizens can't keep up, and we need to
think first of them. As a country, we find ourselves caught between the rock
of slower growth and the hard place of inflation. All of this, in large
part, because the price of oil is too high, the supply of oil is too
uncertain, and we depend on oil too much.

*Energy security is a vital question because it concerns America's most
fundamental interests, and above all the safety of our citizens from the
violence of the world.* All the tact of diplomacy cannot conceal a blunt
reality. When we buy foreign oil, we are enriching some of our worst
enemies. And in the Middle East, Venezuela, and elsewhere, these regimes
know how to use the power of that wealth.

In the case of Iran, despite our own sanctions, they use it to pursue
nuclear weapons. They use it to threaten Israel and other democracies.
Elsewhere, oil wealth allows undemocratic governments to control their own
people — to crush dissent and to subjugate women. They use it to finance
terrorists around the world and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere.
These are some of the most stagnant and oppressive societies on Earth, held
back by oil-rich elites who would not last long if their own people had a
choice in the matter. From these elites, we get the oil that fuels our
productive economy. From us, they get the money that preserves their unjust
power. Moreover, by relying upon oil from the Middle East, we not only
provide wealth to the sponsors of terror — we provide high-value targets to
the terrorists themselves. Across the world are pipelines, refineries,
transit routes, and terminals for the oil we r ely on. And Al Qaeda
terrorists know where they are.

Even if these other interests were not in the balance, America would still
need to follow the straightest path to energy security, because of a threat
literally gathering around the Earth itself. Back when Americans first
learned to associate the word "energy" with "crisis," we didn't fully
understand how fossil fuel emissions retain heat within the atmosphere. We
didn't know that over time these greenhouse gasses could warm the planet. We
didn't know they could melt glaciers and ice sheets, or raise the waters and
alter the balance that sustains life. Good stewardship, prudence, and simple
common sense demand that we act to meet this challenge, act quickly, and act
together.

Energy security requires unity because it is not just one issue among many —
another box on the candidate questionnaire. Our country's need for a safe,
clean, and affordable supply of energy is not just one more competitor for
attention in Washington, one more special interest in an overcrowded field.
The great issue of energy security is the sum total of so many problems that
confront our nation. And it demands of us that we shake off old ways,
negotiate new hazards, and make hard choices long deferred.

This is a matter that has confounded nearly twenty Congresses and seven
presidents. Yet even now our energy debates carry the echoes of ten, twenty,
or even thirty years ago. We hear the same calls for new energy taxes,
instead of new energy production. We are offered the same agenda of inaction
— that long recitation of things we cannot do, energy we cannot produce,
refineries we cannot build, plants we cannot approve, coal we cannot use,
technologies we cannot master. The timid litany of limitations goes on and
on. And it says more about the culture of Washington than it does about the
character of America.

In the same way, energy bills are debated, passed, and signed into law with
little serious thought to energy reform — but never without the familiar
corporate handouts and fighting over scraps of pork. Even now, some in
Washington still seem to think the best plan is a direct, heartfelt appeal
for Saudi sympathy, as if that conveyed anything other than weakness. In the
way of new ideas, a majority of the House of Representatives actually voted
in favor of suing OPEC, as if we can litigate our way to energy security.

Ladies and gentlemen, America is going to meet this great challenge, but we
are not going to do it as a supplicant or as a plaintiff. We are not going
to meet it with words at all. We are going to meet it with action. And we
are going to meet this challenge in a way consistent with the character of
our nation. Three decades of partisan paralysis on energy security is
enough. Since I am not president, I cannot say the buck stops here — but I
will say that it must stop now.

Should I be entrusted with the honor of that office, I will break the
stalemate in Washington, and I will put this country on a course to energy
security. I will authorize and support new exploration and production of
America's own oil and gas reserves — because we cannot outsource the
solution to America's energy problem.

Opponents of domestic production cling to their position even as the price
of foreign oil has doubled and doubled again. They were against it when a
gallon of gas cost two dollars. They are still against it when a gallon of
gas cost well above four dollars. And we're left to wonder what it will take
to shake their faith in this dogma of dependence on foreign oil. As for me,
my convictions place a priority on the well-being of people who cannot
afford these ever-rising prices. Every year, we are sending hundreds of
billions of dollars out of the country for oil imports, much of it from
OPEC, while trillions of dollars' worth of oil reserves in America go
unused. As a matter of fairness, we must deal with the here and now, and
assure affordable fuel for America by producing more of it ourselves.

Fairness also requires that we reform the oil futures market. We must purge
the market of the reckless speculation, unrelated to any kind of productive
commerce, that has inflated the price of gasoline — at the expense of
working men and women across our country. With new regulations, I intend to
assure integrity in oil-futures trading, and to protect the public interest.

The need for more production extends as well to another long-neglected
source of energy, and that is nuclear power. Here, too, opposition to this
clean and proven technology has more to do politics than with the merits.
The experience of nations across Europe and Asia has shown that nuclear
energy is efficient. It is safe, it is proven, and it is essential to
America's energy future.

Therefore, if I am elected president, I will set this nation on a course to
building 45 new reactors by the year 2030. And I will set the goal of 100
new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America. This task
will be as difficult as it is necessary. We will need to recover all the
knowledge and skills that have been lost over three stagnant decades in a
highly technical field. As Nevadans are well aware, we will need to solve
complex problems of moving and storing materials that will always need
safeguarding. We will need to do all of these things, and do them right, as
we have done great things before.

Perhaps no achievement would do more to secure our energy future than the
mastery of clean-coal technology. From Wyoming to West Virginia, America's
coal resources are greater than the oil riches of any kingdom of the Middle
East. Burning coal cleanly is a challenge of practical problem-solving and
human ingenuity — and we have no shortage of those in America either. So, as
president, I will commit two billion dollars each year, until 2024, to
clean-coal research, development, and deployment. We will build the
demonstration plants. We will refine the techniques and equipment. We will
deliver not only electricity but jobs to some of the areas hardest hit by
our economic troubles. And in the end, we will make clean coal a reality.

The strategy here is to produce more, use less, and invent new ways of doing
both. And inventing new ways is what we Americans do. What we need most
right now is better and faster innovation in the cars and trucks we drive.
And government policy is supposed to serve this purpose. Yet the highest
fuel efficiency standards are useless if violations incur no serious
penalty. Incentives for the purchase of fuel-efficient cars are too often
the handiwork of lobbyists, with all the inconsistency and irrationality
that involves. Support for corn-based ethanol has been a case study in the
law of unintended consequences, distorting food markets through cropland
competition, and depriving America of better and cheaper alternative fuels.

In each case, our government has sought the right objectives, but often with
bad execution. And this failure of leadership must end. Standards in fuel
efficiency serve a great national goal, and in my administration the
penalties will assure compliance. In place of the current patchwork of
incentives and credits for hybrids and other carbon-cutting vehicles, we
will issue a Clean Car Challenge to the automakers of America, in the form
of a single and substantial tax credit to buyers based on the reduction of
carbon emissions. For every automaker who can sell a zero-emissions car, we
will commit a 5,000 dollar tax credit to each and every customer who buys
that car. For other vehicles, whatever type they may be, the lower the
carbon emissions, the higher the tax credit.

Instead of playing favorites among the lobbyists, our government must also
level the playing field for all alcohol fuels that break the monopoly of
gasoline, to lower both gasoline prices and carbon emissions. This can be
done with a simple federal standard to hasten the conversion of all new
vehicles in America to flex-fuel technology — allowing drivers to use
alcohol fuels instead of gas in their cars. Whether it takes a meeting with
automakers during my first month in office, or my signature on an act of
Congress, we will meet the goal of a swift conversion of American vehicles
away from oil.

At the same time, we must not overlook the possibility that one day our cars
can run without burning liquid fuels at all. Instead, cars can run on
battery power alone, or as plug-in hybrids using both liquids and
electricity. Some talented engineers are on the case, but this is a national
priority and we must give it national focus. To add urgency to the mission,
we will offer a prize of 300 million dollars — a dollar for every citizen —
to the creator of a battery package of a size, capacity, cost, and power far
surpassing existing technology. In the quest for alternatives to oil, our
government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and
excusing failure. From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in
engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.

At this moment, some of the best minds in our country are also at work
discovering or perfecting alternative technologies. They are not tilting at
windmills — they're building them. They are capturing the boundless powers
of the sun, the tides, the mighty rivers, and the warmth of the Earth
itself. Yet for all the good work of entrepreneurs and inventors in finding
cleaner and better technologies, the fundamental incentives of the market
are still on the side of carbon-based energy.

Even with oil running at about 140 dollars per barrel, these new
alternatives have yet to take the place of oil in our economy for two basic
reasons: our infrastructure is outdated and our production capacity has been
constrained. And this has to change as we can make the great turn away from
fossil fuels. To lead in this effort, our government must strike at the
source of the problem — with reforms that only Congress can enact and the
president can sign.

We must do this in a way that gives American businesses new incentives and
new rewards to seek, instead of just giving them new taxes to pay and new
orders to follow. The most direct way to achieve this is through a system
that sets clear limits on all greenhouse gases, while also allowing the sale
of rights to excess emissions. And this is the proposal I will submit to the
Congress if I am elected president — a cap-and-trade system to change the
dynamic of our energy economy.

For all of the last century, the profit motive basically led in one
direction toward machines, methods, and industries that used oil and gas.
Enormous good came from that industrial growth, and we are all the
beneficiaries of the national prosperity it built. But there were costs we
weren't counting, and these have added up now, in the atmosphere, in the
oceans, and all across the natural world. And what better way to correct
past errors than to turn the creative energies of the free market in the
other direction?

Under the cap-and-trade system, this can happen. In all its power, the
profit motive will suddenly begin to shift and point the other way toward
cleaner fuels, wiser ways, and a healthier planet. As never before, the
market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or
acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy. It is very hard to picture
venture capitalists, corporate planners, small businesses and
environmentalists all working to the same good purpose. But such cooperation
is actually possible, and this reform will set it in motion.

My friends, America's dependence on foreign oil was a troubling situation 35
years ago. It was an alarming situation twenty years ago. It is a dangerous
situation today. And starting in the term of the next president, we must
take control over our own energy future, and become once again the master of
our fate.

In recent days I have set before the American people an energy plan, the
Lexington Project — named for the town where Americans asserted their
independence once before. And let it begin today with this commitment: In a
world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve
strategic independence by 2025.

This pledge is addressed to all concerned — to those abroad whose power
flows from an accident of geology, and to you, my fellow Americans, whose
strength proceeds from unity of purpose. Together, we will break the power
of OPEC over the United States. And never again will we leave our vital
interests at the mercy of any foreign power.

Some will say this goal is unattainable within that relatively short span of
years — it's too hard and we need more time. Let me remind them that in the
space of half that time — about eight years — this nation conceived and
carried out a plan to take three Americans to the Moon and bring them safely
home. In less than a third of that time, the gathered energies of my
father's generation built the industrial might that overcame Nazi Germany
and imperial Japan. That is the scale of our achievement when we set our
minds to a task. That is what this country can do when we see a danger, and
declare a purpose, and find the will to act.

As president, I will turn all the apparatus of government in the direction
of energy independence for our country — authorizing new production,
building nuclear plants, perfecting clean coal, improving our electricity
grid, and supporting all the new technologies that one day will put the age
of fossil fuels behind us. Much will be asked of industry as well, as
automakers and others adapt to this great turn toward new sources of power.
And a great deal will depend on each one of us, as we learn to make smarter
use of energy, and also to draw on the best ideas of both parties, and work
together for the common good.

This Project is not a plan calibrated to please every interest group or to
meet every objection. That is how we arrived to our present predicament.
That is how energy policy in Washington became a long list of subjects
avoided, options ruled out, and possibilities foreclosed. Nor can I promise
you that the long-term success of this Project will bring instant relief. In
the mission of energy security, some tasks are the work of decades and some
the work of years. And they will take all the will and resolve of which we
are capable. But I can promise you this. Unless we begin this mission now,
nothing will change at all, except for the worse. And when we succeed in the
hard reform ahead, your children will live in a more prosperous country, in
a more peaceful world.

This is a test of foresight, of political courage, and of the unselfish
concern that one generation owes to the next. It is a test of our nation's
ability to deal with serious matters in a serious way. It is even a test of
America's character, of our capacity to respond to pressure and to overcome
adversity. Americans don't hide from history or acquiesce in playing its
victims. We make history, and we make the future better than the past. In my
life I have seen the character of Americans tested, and tested in the most
extreme circumstances, and I never doubt that Americans can do hard things
and do them right. That is what is asked of us right now, once again, and
together we will see the mission through. Thank you.

-- 
Cammie L. Croft
Tracking/Media Monitoring Director
Progressive Media USA
[email-masked]
202-609-7679 (office)
206-999-3064 (cell)

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