Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain is formally breaking with President Bush on global warming and energy policy.

“Our government must strike at the source of the problem—with reforms only Congress can enact and the president can sign,” McCain said at the Vestas Wind Technology power plant in Oregon Monday “We know that greenhouse gases are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change, and we know that greenhouse gases, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion.”

“I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges,” McCain said, obviously criticizing President Bush who has mostly opposed global-warming related legislation. McCain used this location as a backdrop to reiterate his support for a government mandated cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“This [cap-and-trade] 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,” McCain said in his speech.

McCain’s senior policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin told reporters in a conference call after the event McCain’s environmental push “indicates the beginning of the end of the Bush administration’s inaction on climate change.”

Under McCain’s plan, the United States would reduce emissions to 2005 levels by the year 2012 and keep reducing through the year 2050 to 66 percent below 2005 levels.

To complement his environmental agenda, the McCain campaign released a new television advertisement, titled “A Better Way” Monday.

“I believe climate change is real,” McCain says in the spot. “It’s not just a greenhouse gas issue, it’s a national security issue .We have an obligation to future generations to take action and fix that.”

Amanda Carpenter is National Political Reporter for Townhall.com.
 
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