Click to hear a portion of Barack Obama's actual interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The McCain campaign has unleashed a last-minute attack on Democrat Barack Obama, alleging -- by selectively quoting from a 10-month-old interview -- that Obama plans to "bankrupt" the coal industry with his plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin mentioned the matter during a Sunday visit to Marietta, Ohio. At about the same time, clips of portions of Obama's January comments to the San Francisco Chronicle began surfacing on conservative blogs and Web sites.

But Obama campaign officials, and the Chronicle's editor, said the Illinois senator's remarks were taken greatly out of context.

And, the "cap-and-trade" carbon dioxide control plan Obama advocates is one of the generally accepted proposals for trying to deal with climate change -- and a proposal that Republican John McCain has also embraced.

Joseph Romm, a former Clinton Energy Department official who writes the Climate Progress blog, conceded "an inartful choice of words by Obama."

"But fundamentally, his remarks reflect an accurate understanding of the impact -- indeed, the goal -- of serious climate regulations, if we ever get around to them," Romm wrote in a morning blog post.

At issue was Obama's explanation of his views on the coal industry's future, made during a January interview with the Chronicle's editorial board.

Obama said he "would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anybody's out there."

Click to hear a portion of Barack Obama's actual interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The McCain campaign has unleashed a last-minute attack on Democrat Barack Obama, alleging -- by selectively quoting from a 10-month-old interview -- that Obama plans to "bankrupt" the coal industry with his plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin mentioned the matter during a Sunday visit to Marietta, Ohio. At about the same time, clips of portions of Obama's January comments to the San Francisco Chronicle began surfacing on conservative blogs and Web sites.

But Obama campaign officials, and the Chronicle's editor, said the Illinois senator's remarks were taken greatly out of context.

And, the "cap-and-trade" carbon dioxide control plan Obama advocates is one of the generally accepted proposals for trying to deal with climate change -- and a proposal that Republican John McCain has also embraced.

Joseph Romm, a former Clinton Energy Department official who writes the Climate Progress blog, conceded "an inartful choice of words by Obama."

"But fundamentally, his remarks reflect an accurate understanding of the impact -- indeed, the goal -- of serious climate regulations, if we ever get around to them," Romm wrote in a morning blog post.

At issue was Obama's explanation of his views on the coal industry's future, made during a January interview with the Chronicle's editorial board.

Obama said he "would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anybody's out there."

Under such a program, the government would put an overall ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions. Companies would need "allowances" from regulators for every ton of carbon dioxide their facilities pump into the atmosphere. Companies could reduce their emissions to meet the caps. Or, they could buy or trade for "allowances" to keep using older facilities. The idea is to put a price on carbon emissions, so that the market forces companies to either install equipment to limit coal's greenhouse emissions or use cleaner fuels.

"That would create a market in which whatever technologies are out there being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market, and the ratcheted down caps that are imposed every year," Obama told Chronicle editors. "So if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can, it's just that it would bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

During her Marietta appearance, Palin used the remarks to try to paint Obama as anti-coal. And, she suggested that the Chronicle -- which endorsed Obama -- had hidden the comments from the public.

"You gotta listen to the tape," Palin said. "Why is this audio tape just now surfacing?"

Voices in the crowd shouted, "Liberal media!"

"This interview was given to San Francisco folks many, many months ago," Palin said. "You should have known about this so you would have better decision-making information when you go into the voting booth."

But John Diaz, editor of the Chronicle's editorial pages, said the entire audio and video of the Obama interview has been available online for months at http://www.sfgate.com/ZCDP.

"How can anyone suggest that we hid an interview that we did, immediately put up on the Web -- and advertised to our readers?" Diaz said. "We promoted it like hell ... and I'm sure the Clinton campaign and the McCain campaign scrubbed it. You can still find the whole 48 minutes and 33 seconds online."

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 348-1702.