According to Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Nobel Prize committee was way off base last year. It's John McCain that should be heralded as the world's leader on climate change, not Al Gore:
“He’s not going to run away from President Bush but at the end of the day, John McCain has earned a reputation, and has the scars to show it, of doing things that put the country ahead of party," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, noting McCain has differed with the party on immigration, his desire to close Guantanamo Bay, and enacting robust climate change policies.
"Climate change is the road less traveled but he’s traveled it even more than Al Gore," Graham said. "Al Gore has talked about it and deserves great recognition but he was around here a long time and never introduced a bill."
Too bad those are not only delusions of grandeur about his presidential candidate of choice, but they're also patently false. As Think Progress points out, it was Gore who initiated the first congressional hearings on climate change back in the late 1970s, which was well before McCain was even elected. Gore also helped initiate the Kyoto Protocol, which he symbolically signed in 1998 despite the fact that the Senate (McCain included) didn't approve it.
McCain did initiate legislation on climate change, which was voted down in 2003 and 2005, and by today's standards of what science says we need to do to curb global warming, that legislation would be very weak. He now supports the comparatively lax Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, and has exhibited fairly questionable judgment on climate and environment issues over the past few years, which I've detailed here previously many times over. So yes, Lindsey Graham, believe what you'd like. That doesn't make it true though.
--Kate Sheppard
