Frances Beinecke's Blog
Bush's Global Warming Plan Weaker than Even He Promised
April 16, 2008
Posted by Frances Beinecke in Solving Global Warming
In a swirl of Rose Garden ceremony, President Bush announced today an eleventh-hour plan for curbing global warming emissions. Unfortunately, it is as feeble as it is late.
Now, in his eighth year, the president has proposed a path on global warming weaker than the campaign pledge he made in September of 2000--the pledge he broke three months into office.
To me and to most of us in the environmental arena, his statement seems like a thinly disguised attempt to derail global warming solutions currently moving in Congress.
The Lieberman-Warner bill would reduce emissions 25 to 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, in line with what scientists say is needed. In sharp contrast, the president’s new goal would allow continued emissions growth of as much as 10 percent or more.
It calls for dangerously lax targets, and as my colleague David Doniger, NRDC’s chief climate litigator, said today on NPR’s Marketplace,
“Targets are just aspirations, and without some law in which the marketplace is set up so that these reductions have to be made and there are incentives to do it and penalties for not doing it, it won't happen.”
Take a look at the New York Times' Andy Revkin’s blog for a transcript of the speech and for more insights from NRDC’s David Doniger.
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Comments
Alan Roberta — Apr 17 2008 10:03 AM
IF President Bush had unveiled his goals for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at the beginning of his administration instead of in its waning months, he might have actually played a role in linking the United States to global efforts to curb climate change. But the proposals he made yesterday, which in 2001 could have been a starting point for negotiations with advocates of stronger action in Congress, are now too belated and too weak to be more than a historical footnote. All three remaining presidential candidates are committed to much more stringent, mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide.
Chad Coleman — Apr 24 2008 09:02 AM
While focus may naturally fall on the domestic political struggles of the largest pollutors, let's not lose sight of what is most immediately at stake:
The very existence of many island nations.
Their fevered effort to reverse climate change is already underway at the only institution where we can effect a change in time. We know what has to be done. Help us.
heather ling — Apr 25 2008 03:11 PM
i think we should act now before its to late.
i dont care if bush will soon not be president if he is trying to stop global warming the the next president should follow the same plan and so on and so on. we need to do something and prevent the world from
becoming a huge mistake.