Background - September 3, 2003
Pressure continues to mount on President Bush to do more to fight global warming. His go-slow policy continues to be dismissed as inadequate by opponents at home and abroad, and is even attracting flak from within his own party and administration.
Save our planet!! Send Bush back to his!
In the summer of 2002 both Japan and the European Union endorsed
the Kyoto protocol, which Bush rejects. Kyoto will coordinate
international efforts to reduce global warming when ratified by
Russia and other eastern European nations. When this happens the US
will be isolated in terms of international opinion on the
issue.
Within the US several states have taken independent action to
curb greenhouse gas emissions, while the Senate has repeatedly
pressed for more aggressive action. In December 2002, as one of his
last acts as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee, former Republican Senator James Jeffords slammed the
administration's record on the environment and said President Bush
was
"undoing his father's legacy. Last week, the Bush administration
announced devastating new regulations that will gut clean air laws
-- allowing power plants to avoid installing simple anti-pollution
equipment when they modernize… the power industry is getting a nice
Christmas gift: the biggest weakening of the Clean Air Act in
history."
Jeffords endorses the view of the Republican Main Street
Partnership, voice of centrist Republicans, in calling for Bush
to:
- Legislatively provide the EPA with a clear mission
statement
- Simplify environmental reporting requirements to focus on
results, not regulations
- Establish environmental improvement pilot programs at the state
level
- Devote increased resources to researching the causes and
effects of global warming
- Better understand -- and begin addressing -- the causes of and
remedies to global warming
So far Bush has shown no inclination to adopt any of these
plans, relying instead on voluntary curbs on industry which will
see emissions continue to grow, but at a reduced rate. Independent
experts within the US remain highly critical of the
administration´s stance:
"You may not like what the science is telling you, especially on
the issue of climate change, but sooner or later it's going to rear
its head and you can't repress it," said Kevin Trenberth, climate
analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in
Boulder, Colorado. "Nature will do what it has to, regardless of
what politicians want."
"The pressure is building," said Paul Joskow, director of the
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the Massachusetts
Institute for Technology. "I think the federal government will
eventually adopt a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions control
policy, but I don´t think it´s going to happen tomorrow."