Bush Grabs headlines with No Action on Climate Change

We do know that Bush was successfully sued by a group of city and state governments, and is currently under court order to take action according to guidelines signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1970.

On November 26, 2006, Andrew Buncombe of the UK Independent wrote:

A number of environmental groups have joined with a dozen US states and several cities to try to force the government to make the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulate carbon emissions under the framework of the Clean Air Extension Act. This legislation, passed by Richard Nixon's administration in 1970, requires the EPA to develop and enforce regulations to protect the public from exposure to airborne contaminants.

After a long struggle, opposed by a corrupt Department of Justice, led by Alberto Gonzalez, the Supreme Court ordered the EPA to carry out its mandate.

By the usual magic of the Bush family and friends, a media drumroll announces the President's arrival in Paris, where headlines yesterday proclaimed:

"Bush to outline climate change vision"

Bush's spokesmodel revealed few details to AFP reporters, all she had to say was:

"This speech is not going to lay out a specific proposal," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "It is a speech that will talk about a strategy for a way forward, and principles for dealing with the problem."

In other words, nothing. No action. No action until George W. Bush has long passed the average expected lifespan of the American Male.

And by a stroke of the same wand, we read in Reuters:

"Bush urges halt of CO2 emission growth by 2025."

In other words, we will stop accelerating toward certain apocolypse sometime around 2025.

This is a sharp contrast to any other proposals on the table, even in the US. The Lieberman-Warner proposal has gained viability just this week, thanks to a new amendment that ensures the bill would pay for itself.
A worst-case analysis by the EPA indicates that it's benefits (in fiscal terms alone) would outweigh it's overall costs to the US economy.
The fact that it relies heavily on nuclear energy is its weakness.

And AFP reports that the UK intends to go much further:

Britain has pledged to introduce the world's first legally-binding targets to cut carbon output by at least 60 percent before 2050, using 1990 levels as a benchmark.
The Climate Change Committee may recommend, by year's end, that reductions be as high as 80 percent, and that other greenhouse gases be included in the legislation, he said.

Their new Climate Change Committee is led by Lord Adair Turner. Turner, a former vice-chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe, takes his mandate seriously, and is concerned about weaknesses in the best plans laid forth by the US:

While underlining the urgency for an aggressive climate change policy, Turner said he was skeptical of two main axes in the US approach to slowing global CO2 emissions.

"I am very worried that the world is simply assuming that carbon capture and storage (CSS) is going to be available as a technology and at a reasonable cost by 2015," he said.
CSS is an as-yet unproven technique for diverting carbon emissions -- from coal-fired energy plants, for example -- and storing them deep underground so that they do not escape into the atmosphere.
"Almost every plan that I see has simply pencilled that in" as if it were a given, he said. "If we don't have it, we will have a major problem."

Sweden has established a much shorter schedule for the end of their use of fossil fuel. Unfortunately, their contribution to global warming is already miniscule compared the the US.

The US contribution to carbon emissions is currently great enough that a similar program, by the US alone, would go a long way towards mitigating an impending disaster that is global in scope.

The heroic posturing and media whitewash we have seen today do not auger well for sucesss in the short term, if we are to rely upon the efforts of George W. Bush.

David Roknich,
oilaction.org