He Never Promised Us a Rose Garden

President Bush delivered a much-hyped speech on the administration's supposedly new global warming policy agenda today in the White House Rose Garden.

Here are my initial reactions:

• The plan, if you can call it that, lags far behind the political curve in either political party. Once again, the President seems to be trying to turn back the hands of time on this issue.

• Today’s proposal is much weaker than what all three presidential candidates, dozens of members of Congress and many state governors are talking about today. It’s weaker than the proposals backed by many leading companies whose business would be covered by a global warming policy.

• The President’s plan wouldn’t even stop the *growth* in global warming emissions until 2025.

• By contrast, Senate legislation offered by Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) – neither one of them exactly Mr. Woodsy Owl – would stop the emissions increase by 2012, and require actual pollution reductions of 25 percent or more by 2025.

• The real story right now is how quickly congress can agree on a concrete limit on global warming pollution backed by an effective market-based system that rewards smart companies for quick action and makes the overall cost of this transition away from old, polluting energy technologies as low as possible.

• The White House likes to talk about technology. But businesses and investors need to know that there will be a market for it before that innovation is unleashed on a large scale. That’s why we need to set the rules of the road now.

• Frankly it’s hard to see how the White House proposal makes any serious contribution to that conversation, or does anything to move our nation forward. It will, however, probably add ammunition to those who would try to sink real solutions.

Business is saying it’s time to act. Scientists are saying it’s time to act. Now finally politicians are saying it’s time to act.