A Climate Change Policy With No Teeth
The academy, politicians, and environmental law nerds have been abuzz the last few days about the possibility of President Bush putting forward a climate change policy showing significant movement from his prior positions. I guess we can all harbor hope. If one was expecting any major policy pronouncement, however, one would have been sorely disappointed with yesterday’s Rose Garden ceremony.
Rather than pressing ahead with important initiatives to control greenhouse gases, President Bush instead announced his support for policies that had previously been rejected by the U.S. Congress and countries across the globe.
The limited CO2 caps announced yesterday would apply only to one sector of the economy – electricity generation – and would leaving the rest of the U.S. economy free to continue releasing untold quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The target reductions outlined by President Bush fall well below what is necessary to meet the U.S. share of worldwide cutbacks that even the most conservative scientists deem necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change in the long term.
In other parts of the world, this “new” U.S. policy that doesn’t come close to meeting the U.S. need for reductions and only ensures that developing countries, such as India and China, will resist binding reductions in CO2 emissions. And while President Bush emphasized the role that new technologies can play in reducing emissions, he fails to promote the strong economic incentives that could spur the development and acceptance of these low-carbon technologies.
The program outlined in the Rose Garden would have represented a welcome “start” if it were announced in 2001; today, however, it constitutes a step backward. Over the last 18 months, academics, scientists and business interests have cooperated with Congress in a meaningful and focused debate aimed at controlling climate change. Many of these discussions centered on the critical need to hold developing countries accountable for their emissions, and on the equally critical need to mitigate the economic impact that CO2 controls might have on U.S. businesses and the people they employ.
The good news is that these efforts have generated real progress, and each of the three candidates to become the next U.S. president has indicated his or her support for a comprehensive bill that would be in line with international expectations.
In one way, however, President Bush does not disappoint. His hubris in assuming that the world will listen to him "no matter what," and his belief that he is always right, were very evident in his pronouncement. However, just as in other issues in this administration, he is in for a rude surprise. For years, President Bush has declined to be a part of any collaborative process on addressing climate change. When it became clear in the last year that businesses (even Republican-leaning businesses) needed "certainty" and were prepared to accept a cap-and-trade bill, this president still wouldn’t play. Because of that, the bill we ultimately get may be harder on particular industries than would have otherwise occurred. It is a sure bet that if President Bush had indicated the possibility of signing a mandatory cap-and-trade bill two years ago, the allocations would almost assuredly have been given way (as they were with SO2) instead of auctioned, the position favored by environmentalists and a position to which most bills are now moving.
Either the President has so isolated himself from public and business opinion on this issue that he doesn’t realize this proposal will go nowhere, or he is intentionally trying to “gum up the works” by slowing down the march towards a thoughtful bill. Whatever the motivation, the only conclusion to draw from his statements in the Rose Garden is that it is time for him to step aside. If he wishes to be remembered for his support of a thoughtful and fair bill on climate change, he can simply sign one of the existing proposals currently before the Congress. His choices were to lead, follow, or get out of the way – and he clearly failed to make the proper choice.
