Bush's climate goals vague – but a start

His call for US emissions to stabilize by 2025 marks a policy change, but is still behind other nations.

from the April 18, 2008 edition

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Critics note this would not even meet the country's current Kyoto Protocol commitment, but it does recognize that stabilizing emissions isn't enough.

All these goals are based on last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. According to the IPCC, holding the increase in global average temperatures to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 would likely help stave off the more-onerous effects of global warming. To do that, however, the IPCC estimated that global greenhouse-gas emissions would have to peak by 2015. And by 2020, industrial countries would have to cut emissions by up to 40 percent below 1990 levels, and by as much as 95 percent by 2050.

The Bush plan, by contrast, calls for US emissions to stabilize by 2025 and does so without specifying the leveling-off point. Given carbon dioxide's long lifetime in the atmosphere, stabilizing emissions means it would still be building in the atmosphere at a time when many scientists say emissions should be falling. The ultimate goal – stabilizing greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere, and hence temperatures – means that emissions must fall to virtually zero.

Pressure to lead

The lack of meaningful cuts in Bush's proposal is a nonstarter for developing countries, who must begin to deal with their own emissions in a new global climate agreement.

"In order to get a real agreement, first the US must agree to hard targets," says one diplomat familiar with the thinking of many developing nations. Without US participation in a meaningful set of reductions, he says, the economics of carbon trading won't be attractive enough to allow some of the mechanisms developing countries are proposing to work.

"If the US does not have the political will to accept targets, as the largest economy in the world, how could any politician in a developing country keep his or her job by taking on heavier burdens than even the US will accept?" asks the diplomat.

One area where analysts converge is on Congress and the White House taking the lead on climate policy, rather than leaving it to federal regulatory agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency, which the US Supreme Court recently ruled has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

As it wraps up its final months in office, the White House has offered up "a well-thought-out set of principles" that deserve serious consideration as the US tries to craft a sustainable climate policy, Mr. Book says.

• Staff writers Ron Scherer and Mark Clayton contributed to this report.

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