Bush proposes new climate change strategy

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON - President Bush called for a halt Wednesday in the growth of greenhouse gases by 2025, acknowledging the needed to head off serious climate change.

The plan came under fire immediately from environmentalists and congressional Democrats who favor mandatory emission cuts, a position also held by all three presidential contenders.

Bush in a Rose Garden address for the first time set a specific target date for U.S. climate pollution reductions and said he was ready to commit to a binding international agreement on long-term reductions as long as other countries such as China do the same.

"There is a wrong way and a right way to approach reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Bush said, making clear that he opposes a Senate measure that would impose mandatory limits on greenhouse gases beginning in five years, followed by annual reductions.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080416/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_climate

[hatrack]

1. Yep, let's wait another 17 YEARS before trying to set any emission limits . . .

Definitely a "new" kind of "strategy". Insane, detached from reality, cynical and ultimately pointless, but most definitely shiny and new!!

[maddezmom]

2. I post a lot of this stuff because I can't believe what I'm reading half the time

[Stuart G]

4. Who can believe much of what comes from the White House.

It is like some kind of surrealistic play. Totally beyond belief..I don't believe it either..

[Harmonicaman]

3. but but but

Global warming is a myth isn't it ???
The earth is there to be raped and the chosen are waiting for rapture ??

Or is Georgie boy getting concerned about his place at Gods right hand come the day when the horn sounds...??

alternately, one of his advisors from Cheneys office has told him theres money to be made from the contracts that will no doubt flow, and maybe he'll get to meet Bono.

[MichiganVote]

5. Its the new and improved, Change The Subject Project.

[Prophet 451]

6. George Bush on climate?

George Bush? The guy whose administration has removed huge swathes of enviromental regulations, legalised mountaintop removal, raised the arsenic levels in drinking water, propped up by a clutch of megacorporations who's bottom line depends on their ability to rape the enviroment?

That George Bush?

On enviromental strategy?


Oh, fuck...

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Hey you sound bitter or something. (nt)

[khaos]

8. fight it over there so we don't have to fight it here?

[struggle4progress]

9. Warmed Over: President Bush delivers much talk and little action on climate change (WaPO editorial)

hursday, April 17, 2008; Page A22

PRESIDENT BUSH strode to the lectern in the Rose Garden yesterday and once again passed up an opportunity -- perhaps his last -- to do something meaningful on climate change. "Today, I am announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025," he said. That pronouncement was a weak and inadequate response to the imperative that the United States provide leadership in combating global warming, a responsibility Mr. Bush has shamefully ducked throughout his presidency ...

To achieve his low-ball goal, Mr. Bush announced no serious initiative but merely recast the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which was originally promoted as a means of weaning the nation off foreign oil. Those reductions not achieved through hiking fuel economy to 35 mpg by 2020, adding 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel to the nation's supply by 2022, and increasing the efficiency of lights and appliances would "depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies," the president said.

Mr. Bush did issue a set of "core principles" ... The "principles" were standard fare ... Mr. Bush's strictures about the right and wrong ways to craft legislation were unhelpful. What's needed is explicit presidential support for .. binding measures to reduce emissions. Mr. Bush once again .. reinforced .. a terrible legacy of inaction on one of the most serious problems he has faced ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041603313.html

[struggle4progress]

10. Bush Climate Speech Covers Familiar Ground

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, April 16, 2008 (ENS) ...

... The president's plan was .. notably short on specifics and he did not outline a legislative proposal for Congress to consider ...

Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, called Bush's plan "the height of irresponsibility" ...

"The president's short-term goal is to do nothing, his medium-term goal is to do nothing much, and his long-term goal is to do nothing close to what's needed to save the planet from global warming," said Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming ...

"Global warming is already transforming the world - last month, global warming caused a chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan to suddenly collapse," said Emily Figdor of Environment America. "President Bush's plan is on a crash course with scientific reality. The time for action is today - not 20 years from now" ...

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2008/2008-04-16-10.asp

[struggle4progress]

11. When Is A Goal Not A Goal? (Goodrich / The Nation)

... President Bush will endorse an "intermediate goal" today for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but he will not put forward any specific legislation or proposal on how the goal should be met, White House officials said.

Now that will do wonders for stopping greenhouse gas emissions, won't it? There's no actual plan, no legislation and no negative outcomes if you don't manage to make the goal. In short, there's no need at all to try to reach the goal by cutting back on emissions ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080416/cm_thenation/769310941

[struggle4progress]

12. Bush's Third Climate-Change Fake-Out (Froomkin / WaPo)

... It took so long for Bush to even acknowledge the human role in global warming that whenever he even mentions the topic, some people act like it's big news ...

His planned speech this afternoon recalls his .. earlier attempts to muddy the debate and buy time.

I chronicled his first such effort in my June 1, 2006, column, Bush's Climate-Change Feint. In a clear move to derail European and U.N. plans for strict caps on emissions, Bush proposed a new round of international meetings that would take up most of the rest of his presidency. The purpose of the meetings, he said, would not be to write rules, but to establish what the White House, in breathtaking new euphemism, called "aspirational goals."

Andrew Gumbel of the Independent offered an instant "translation" of Bush's basic message: "In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll ratings. So now I have to look interested" ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/04/16/BL2008041601732.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[struggle4progress]

13. SAfrica blasts US climate change proposal

... In a statement issued in Paris, where he was to attend a two-day meeting of major carbon emitters, Environment and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said Bush's speech was "particularly disappointing."

"It seems as if the current US administration wants to turn back the clock to where we were before the breakthrough achieved in Bali in December 2007, when all countries, including the United States, agreed to a Bali Roadmap that outlines the negotiation process and building blocks for a strengthened climate agreement," said Schalkwyk ...

"In effect, the US wants developing countries that already face huge poverty and development challenges to pay for what the US and other highly industrialized countries have caused over the past 150 years. We are willing to do our fair share to address the climate challenge, but not to carry a part of the US's burden.

"On this issue, the current US administration is isolated. It is them against the overwhelming majority of the world, developed and developing countries alike."

http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=africa&item=080416213920.oxiunm3t.php