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.