Bush Energy Proposals, Speech Underwhelming To Observers - IPS

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While energy and environmental activists applauded his portrayal of the energy problem faced by the U.S. as an "addiction to oil", they said his solution -- a 22 percent increase in clean energy research -- falls far short of what is required. And they were particularly disappointed that the president did not even mention global warming, which most scientists believe is caused in major part by emissions from the combustion of oil and other fossil fuels, in the hour-long speech to Congress and the nation.

The United States, one of only two industrialised countries that have failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, currently accounts for more than 25 percent of global emissions. "When you completely ignore the biggest challenge of all -- global warming -- your plans will never measure up," said Steve Cochran, a spokesman for Environmental Defence (ED), who accused Bush of "thinking small". "Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient," the New York Times declared in a scathing lead editorial Wednesday that was devoted exclusively to Bush's failure to both seriously address global warming and promote major policy reforms, such as stricter fuel-efficiency requirements for cars.

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"While the rhetorical level was dramatic, the policy proposals that followed were meek," noted David Sandalow, who heads the Environment and Energy Project of the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank here. One Congressional aide noted that 300 million dollars in additional funding was equivalent to what Washington currently spends on operations in Iraq over a two-day period.

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One commentator, the Washington Post's economics columnist, Steven Pearlstein, took a particularly cynical view of Bush's proposals. "(D)oes anyone really believe that a president and vice president who became wealthy from their association with the oil and gas industry, who never failed to tout the industry line and who presided over the biggest transfer of wealth from consumers to industry in the history of mankind -- that these same leaders will move us beyond a 'petroleum-based economy' to one based on 'wood chips, stalks or switch grass,"' he wrote, referring to Bush's description of the sources of cellulosic ethanol.

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