Energy & Environment

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16 April 2008
Technology-based Policy on Climate Change Urged by Bush

Related:
 • President Bush Discusses Climate Change
 • Fact Sheet: Taking Additional Action to Confront Climate Change
 • Press Briefing by Dana Perino and Jim Connaughton, Chairman, Council on Environmental Quality

Washington -- President Bush is calling for a technology-based policy to slow greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. His remarks came on the eve of the Paris "Major Economies Meeting," April 18-20 where 16 leading nations will discuss solutions to climate change. The meetings were initiated by Bush in September 2007 to stimulate international cooperation.

“Today, I am announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025,” he said.

Bush cited recent federal legislation that mandates a fuel-economy standard for passenger vehicles of 14.7 kilometers per liter (35 miles per gallon) by 2020 and requires substantially increased production of renewable fuels by 2022. “This should provide an incentive for shifting to a new generation of fuels like cellulosic ethanol that will reduce concerns about food prices and the environment,” he said.

The president acknowledged the need to act more quickly to “slow the growth of power-sector greenhouse gas emissions” through the development of new technology and investment in the green energy sector. He opposed “abandoning nuclear power and our nation’s huge reserves of coal.” Rather, he wants “to promote more emission-free nuclear power and encourage the investments necessary to produce electricity from coal without releasing carbon into the air.”

Other new objectives include improving energy efficiency in lighting, appliances and buildings, and increasing reliance on renewable energy sources for electricity. These steps will “prevent billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere,” he said.

Bush said the commercialization and use of low-emission technologies should be more competitive. “Long-lasting” incentives should be introduced to “make lower emission power sources less expensive relative to higher emissions sources.”

American economic and energy security, he said, would be protected and harmful greenhouse gas emissions simultaneously would be reduced by fortifying technology and green economy investment. “The right way is to set realistic goals for reducing emissions consistent with advances in technology, while increasing our energy security and ensuring our economy can continue to prosper and grow,” he said, adding it is possible to “slow, stop and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions as long as technology continues to develop.”

Commenting on the “flawed approach” of the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012, he called for international cooperation in formulating new policies to meet the challenge of climate change, “a new process that brings together the countries responsible for most of the world’s emissions.”

The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Countries that ratified this protocol committed to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases, which have been linked to global warming. It was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 and came into force on February 16, 2005. The United States is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol; neither are developing nations like China and India.

“China and India are experiencing rapid economic growth which is good for their people and good for the world.  But this also means that they are emitting increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases which has consequences for the entire global climate,” Bush said.

In response, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) vice president and member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Richard Moss, called Bush’s plan “unrealistic” and “too little too late” in a April 16 statement posted on the WWF Web site.

“Halting the growth of emissions by 2025 is woefully inadequate,” he said. “While no one knows exactly what the right emissions target is, it’s very clear that by 2020 emissions must be in sharp decline,” Moss said.

He added it is time to “focus on the next occupant of the White House. We need to hear how each of the candidates would address the climate change threat. The world is looking to them for leadership.”

The United States is working to achieve a mutually acceptable replacement for the Kyoto Protocol with other nations under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change by the end of 2009.

“We’re working toward a climate agreement that includes the meaningful participation of every major economy and gives none a free ride,” Bush said.

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