Earlier this week, dozens of world leaders gathered at the United Nations for detailed policy discussions about combating global warming. George W. Bush, who has repeatedly warned against “passing on problems to future generations,” decided to skip the discussions, and refused to send a U.S. delegation to the talks.
The Bush gang, unwilling to appear disinterested in the environmental crisis, came up with an alternative — instead of working with international allies on climate change, Bush would host a parallel meeting. Unlike the larger gathering working on emissions cuts, Bush’s counter-meeting would include the world’s largest polluters, including China and India, all of which would oppose mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases.
President Bush’s two-day climate meeting, opening Thursday, will emphasize creating more processes to find a solution to global warming, rather than setting firm goals for reducing carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for heating up the atmosphere.
The nations summoned by Bush will “seek agreement on the process” and more work teams for nations to set their own strategies beyond 2012, when the U.N.-brokered Kyoto Protocol expires, according to a White House statement Wednesday.
That’s a great euphemism, isn’t it? The president will “seek agreement on the process.” In other words, Bush isn’t inviting these countries to talk about climate change; he’s inviting these countries to talk about how they’ll talk about climate change.
Unfortunately, some pesky critics have pointed out how incredibly unhelpful this is. “We can’t do this on the basis of talking about talking or setting goals to set goals,” John Ashton, a special representative on climate change for the British foreign secretary, said. “We know that a voluntary approach to global warming is about as effective as a voluntary speed limit sign in the road. We don’t just need an approach that works; we need an approach that works very quickly.”
And while these talks about talks get underway, there are some other aspects to the White House’s rhetoric about global warming that warrant attention. For example, the Bush gang has decided to take credit for a emissions-cut program that the White House opposes.
Seeking to counter international pressure to adopt binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions, the Bush administration has been touting the success of three mandatory programs to curb U.S. energy consumption: gas mileage standards for vehicles, efficiency standards for home appliances and state laws requiring utilities to increase their use of renewable energy sources.
But for most of the Bush presidency, the White House has either done little to promote these measures or, in some cases, has actively fought against them. Moreover, the fuel economy and appliance initiatives were first taken years ago to slash energy consumption, long before climate change became a pressing issue.
Moreover, Reuters has a helpful timeline demonstrating the ways in which Bush has not only contradicted himself on the issue, but has actually gotten worse as the problem has grown more intense.
The bottom line? The president wants to stall for time, leaving this mess on his successor’s desk — just like every other policy challenge he’s made worse over the last seven years.