John McCain joined Jake Tapper on Sunday for a packed CNN's State of the Union. The two touched on DACA and North Korea and the senator had a frank and moving conversation about his cancer diagnosis, saying that he has admitted to himself that everyone has to die eventually. It's the kind of moment where you can see the charm and humanity that's made McCain a political celebrity But then they detoured to climate change. When Tapper asked McCain about GOP attitudes toward climate change, and McCain chose instead to discuss nuclear power.

It's the cleanest, cheapest, in many ways, source of power. We have to understand that the climate may be changing and we can take commonsense measures which will not harm the American people.

While it's a relief to hear even a halfhearted admission from a Republican that climate change is real, it's hard to give McCain much credit. It is his party after all, not CNN's audience, that empowers climate change deniers and uses obstruction as evidence of success.

McCain built up goodwill among liberals in July when he joined Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins in killing the most recent Obamacare repeal efforts. But it's important to remember that this moment was out of character for John McCain: saying something brave has always been his strong suit, not following through on it.

And on climate change issues he's no different. He's rarely strayed from the party line for confirming Donald Trump's cabinet picks, voting to appoint gas pipeline-enthusiast Ryan Zinke to the Department of the Interior, Rick Perry as Energy Secretary, and oil exec Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. (McCain says he sometimes regrets voting for Tillerson, which is still showing integrity only when it doesn't count.) The least antagonistic thing he's done was to skip the vote that put anti-environmentalist crusader Scott Pruitt at the head of the EPA.

But, yes, with three active hurricanes in the Atlantic and the Gulf of the Mexico, we do have to understand that the climate may be changing. Now how about those commonsense measures?

H/t The Hill.