PrintApril 16, 2008
Bush Caves on Climate Change
Something weird happens to presidents in their second term. They start worrying about how future historians will view them and all of a sudden they end up supporting issues that they would never have dreamed of backing when they were fresh to the office.
President Bush has apparently decided to hedge his bets and make an about face on the issue of global warming just in case 100 years from now Los Angeles is under water or something:
Revising his stance on global warming, President Bush will propose a new target for stopping the growth of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.Perhaps the president wants to assuage the Europeans who have been on him for years to get with the global warming program. But there is no doubt that this is a big change in his policies and is probably a step down the road toward much more restrictive policies that will be a detriment to our economy.
The president also will call Wednesday for putting the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plans within 10 to 15 years, according to a senior administration official familiar with the afternoon speech Bush will deliver in the Rose Garden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the speech.
Bush is not going to outline a specific proposal, but he'll lay out a strategy for "realistic" emission reduction targets and "principles" he thinks Congress should follow in crafting global warming legislation.
