Bush Sets Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goal

President Bush called Wednesday for the United States to stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and challenged other countries, including major polluters like China and India, to abandon trade barriers on energy-related technology and commit to goals of their own.
The White House cast Mr. Bush’s announcement in the Rose Garden as an ambitious effort by a president determined to lead on the climate change issue, even with just 9 months left in office.

But critics — including environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers — said the effort was too little, too late. They accused Mr. Bush of trying to derail legislation that would curb emissions even further. And because he did not offer any specifics for how to reach his 2025 goal, they dismissed the speech as irrelevant.

“It is now time for the U.S. to look beyond 2012 and take the next step,” Mr. Bush said, a reference to his previously stated national goal, announced in 2002, of an 18 percent reduction in the growth of emissions of heat-trapping gases relative to economic growth by 2012. Mr. Bush said the nation was on track to meeting that target.

The speech was intended to influence an international conference on climate change, which is convening in Paris on Thursday. The conference is the outgrowth of a process Mr. Bush initiated last year, when he called together major polluting nations and urged them to come together by the end of 2009 around a common goal for the long-term reduction of emissions.

But Mr. Bush’s talk was also a slap at the Democratic-controlled Senate, which is about to consider legislation that would impose limits on emissions and allow companies to trade pollution credits — the so-called “cap and trade” approach. The White House vehemently opposes that approach, a point Mr. Bush restated on Wednesday.

“Bad legislation would impose tremendous costs on our economy and on American families without accomplishing important climate change goals we share,” Mr. Bush warned. But rather than outlining his own legislative proposal, Mr. Bush emphasized advances in technology, like clean-coal energy, wind power and farm-grown fuels like ethanol, as a means to achieving emissions reductions. As he has in the past, he said the route to reducing emissions was through the free market and incentives for companies to invest — as opposed to mandates or new taxes.

“The wrong way is to raise taxes, duplicate mandates, or demand sudden and drastic emissions cuts that have no chance of being realized and every chance of hurting our economy,” he said. “The right way is to set realistic goals for reducing emissions consistent with advances in technology.”

Click here to read the full NY Times article.