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President Bush offers goals to fight climate change
James Gerstenzang and Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times
His plan to gradually curb greenhouse gas emissions may have come too late to affect the debate, critics say.
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President Bush said Wednesday that the U.S. should halt the rise in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, as he sought to set boundaries for global warming initiatives under consideration by Congress and major industrialized nations.
But the calendar leaves him little time and, critics said, little prospect of influencing the debate. All of the presidential candidates who want to replace him favor stronger action.
To reach his goal, the president said, the U.S. would need to slow the growth in emissions from power plants in the next 10 to 15 years and then begin to reverse that growth.
As he has in the past, Bush put greatest reliance on using technological advances to reduce the release of carbon dioxide and other gases, which are released when coal, petroleum products and other fossil fuels are burned, and which are widely blamed for rising global temperatures. He gave no support to calls for mandatory limits on emissions.
A confluence of three things has pushed Bush to move haltingly toward a more aggressive global warming policy
(17 April 2008)
From the New York Times (“Bush Sets Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goal”):
… The White House cast Mr. Bush’s announcement in the Rose Garden as an ambitious effort by a president determined to lead on the climate change issue, even with just nine months left in office.
But critics – including environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers – said the effort was too little, too late. They accused Mr. Bush of trying to derail legislation that would curb emissions even further. And because he did not offer any specifics for how to reach his 2025 goal, they dismissed the speech as irrelevant.
Same as it ever was
David Roberts, Gristmill
The whole media world is in a frenzy, yet again, over a Bush speech on climate change. A new strategy! An effort to secure a legacy! Exciting new principles and goals! Even my own bosses are pressing me to come up with a thoughtful reaction.
Sigh.
I hate to be the party-pooper. But we’ve been here before. How many times does Lucy expect us to try to kick this football?
Here are the three things you need to know about Bush’s speech — the same three things you needed to know about his previous speeches on the subject:
- Bush’s speech is not meant to advance serious efforts to address climate change, but to thwart the efforts of others. This has been true of all three speeches he’s given — see Dan Froomkin on this. This time around, it’s meant to thwart Congressional Democrats, who show every sign of being on the verge of passing a carbon cap-and-trade bill.
- The targets Bush does announce would doom the planet. Last time around it was improving the “carbon intensity” of the economy — that is, releasing less CO2 per unit of GDP, even though total CO2 would continue rising. This time around, it’s “halting the growth” of U.S. emissions by 2025. By way of contrast, international folks are pushing for a peak in global emissions by 2020. If U.S. emissions keep rising until 2025 — and that’s what Bush is calling for, rising CO2 emissions for another 17 years — efforts to keep global CO2 levels below 450ppm, or even 550ppm, are futile, and unthinkable human misery lies on the horizon.
- The Republican Party will not accept even the weak initiatives Bush lays out. This piece in Roll Call ($ub. req’d) tells the story:
Years after President Bush torpedoed the Kyoto global warming treaty, he is expected to outline principles this afternoon for passing legislation to reduce carbon emissions, but it’s unclear how much support he will find among Congressional Republicans.
For those who care about the details, I’ll address specific parts of the speech beneath the fold.
(17 April 2008)
Also at Gristmill:
Speech excerpts
Responses to Bush’s climate speech
Carbon Showdown
Editorial, Wall Street Journal
The First Commandment of climate-change politics is that you can never be green enough – as President Bush learns anew every time he even attempts to address the issue. Critics were quick to claim a victory of sorts after his Rose Garden speech yesterday, while at the same time carrying on about half-measures and delay on “the planetary emergency.”
Mr. Bush, however, made few departures from current policy. His larger purpose was to join a debate that so far has been conducted in a reality vacuum, and to force the global warmists to take responsibility for the carbon and greenhouse-gas regulation they say they favor.
… Greens are already deriding the goal as not enough, which may be one measure of its realism.
… Although U.S. CO2 emissions grew by only 2% between 2000 and 2005, everyone believes a major global warming bill is inevitable, and maybe it is. The rationale for yesterday’s speech was to acknowledge these political realities but also to pair them with economic ones, expanding the debate to include costs as well as benefits.
(17 April 2008)
Please note that the people who write the WSJ editorials are NOT the same people who write the news articles. The WSJ journalists have a high reputation among other journalists. The editorials have a following among the intensely conservative. -BA
Video of Bush climate speech (video)
President George W. Bush via Energy Policy TV
President Bush outlines a new strategy for the United States to deal with the issue of climate change. That strategy aims to stop carbon emissions by 2025, and begin to reverse thereafter, as long as mitigation technology continues to advance.
(17 April 2008)
