Living Green

Bush's actions on global warming are too little, too late

George W. Bush entered the presidency pooh-poohing the very idea of global warming, fronting a chorus of right-wing radio ranters and other deniers singing the same tune.

The president eventually admitted there might be something to global warming, then later conceded that, yes, human activity seemed to be implicated in "climate change" – the term favored instead of "global warming" by conservatives who insisted for years, against all evidence, that there is no warming.

Now, with seven years over the dam, the president says that indeed we ought to start doing something about this climate change thing. But he doesn't say what.

In his recent, much-trumpeted declaration on the issue, Bush set a goal of stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 but tendered no legislation to get that done. Europe already has committed itself to bettering Bush'goal – committed, mind you, not just wistfully hoped for it, as our president does.

Mainly, it seems, Bush wants to head Congress off from enacting any legislation and maybe to dodge the court rulings, which are piling up, that order the administration to enforce existing environmental laws that the Bush bureaucracy has been willfully ignoring.

The Senate is scheduled this summer to take up legislation co-sponsored by John Warner, the Virginia Republican, and by Joe Lieberman, the occasional Democrat of Connecticut. Their bill would set up a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions; companies could trade emission credits in order to stay under mandatory limits.

That approach has growing bipartisan support. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama support it.

Instead, in his new policy statement, Bush seems once again to be depending mainly on market forces to somehow do the right thing – you know: Just like they headed off the housing and credit meltdowns. Tinker Bell still lives in the Bush White House.

As he often has – and rightly so – the president called on China and India, both major and rapidly growing sources of greenhouse emissions, to adopt broad and vigorous control policies and technologies. Their laggardness is real and regrettable but no excuse for the United States, the world's biggest offender, to continue dawdling with them.

Instead, U.S. leadership is called for. Our balkiness provides an excuse for other nations to hang back with us.

We have lately taken a few welcome steps in the right direction with legislation that will improve vehicle fuel economy, boost appliance efficiency and increase the use of alternative fuels.

But even if those steps pay off to their maximum potential, Bush's modest goal of zero emission growth by 2025 is unlikely to be met, and we won't even be approaching the goal urged by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a cut in greenhouse emissions by 2050 of between 50 and 85 percent.

The president's statement emphasized his preferred "principles" for addressing warming, cover for his paucity of means. On item after item – economic debilities, other environmental shortfalls, war(s) – Bush is using his waning presidency only to put a gloss on the problems he is leaving for his successor, not even to mitigate them, much less to solve any.