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| Washington Watch |
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Bush’s Call To Address Global Warming In No Way a Sneaky Ploy to Derail Congressional Plans to Address Climate Change Preemptive news conferences. Making a grand announcement shortly before lawmakers sit down to debate a climate bill in Congress, President Bush is once again using this tried-and-true strategy to torpedo meaningful plans to address global climate change.
Like the global warming plan (how’s that going, by the way?) he trotted out right before last year's G8 Summit, this announcement is long on rhetoric and short on substance.
Bush's plan doesn't call for carbon emissions reductions. Instead, almost the entire emphasis is placed on new technology to solve this crisis. The idea is to let emissions rise for 17 more years. The growth of emissions would finally be stopped in 2025. Then, "so long as technology continues to advance," we can finally begin to actually cut emissions.
The 17 year thing seems oddly bizarre and arbitrary. Why 2025? Does Bush know something we don't? Maybe he thinks that by the year 2025 man will no longer be alive. If that's it, then he's "misremembered" the lyrics to the song "In The Year 2525". Or, maybe he's just stalling for time.
Bush is wary of government regulation and noted, "Too much of our focus often is on it's only the government that's going to solve this. We have to empower the private sector to do so, as well."
"Empower" the private sector to voluntarily reduce its carbon emissions? Sure, that’s a plan that’s bound to work. While we’re at it, why not "empower" criminals to turn themselves in to the police, or "empower" motorists to ticket themselves when they exceed the speed limit?
Bush was able to bully the G8 on climate change last year. Let's hope Congress proves more resilient. This page was created 04-25-2008, however the content may have been pre-existing on a different page. |
