Opinion: Bush fiddles, Earth burns
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Last year, President Bush was quick to take credit when the Energy Department reported there was a drop in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2006. In a White House statement, Bush said:
We are effectively confronting the important challenge of global climate change through regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives, and strong economic investment. New policies at the federal, state, and local levels -- such as my initiative to reduce by 20 percent our projected use of gasoline within 10 years -- promise even more progress.
There’s only one problem with the president’s analysis: According to a report released today by the Energy Information Administration, the fact that greenhouse gases fell by 1.3% in the U.S. that year was mainly the result of unusually mild weather. In 2007, the EIA says, global warming gas emissions rose 1.4%, thanks to harsher climate conditions. In other words, the president’s purely voluntary measures to fight climate change have had no discernible effect.
That won’t come as much of a surprise to economists or climate scientists, who have widely dismissed voluntary programs as ineffective. But it should give President-elect Barack Obama and the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress some ammunition as they pursue more forward-thinking energy and pollution strategies than we’ve seen to date. According to today’s Wall Street Journal, they aren’t planning to waste much time: Among the legislative changes considered ‘low-hanging fruit’ by Democratic leaders -- meaning items that could be accomplished quickly, perhaps within 100 days of Obama’s swearing-in -- is a plan that would require the country to get 15% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Bring it on.
* Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images