“In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of change and opened new possibilities for confronting it,” Bush said in announcing his proposal. “The United States takes this issue seriously.”
Details of the Bush Plan to Control Global Warming
Under the Bush proposal, the United States would host and lead a series of talks over the next 18 months [through the end of 2008], which would include the 15 nations that emit the most greenhouse gases—including large developing nations such as China and India. The aim of those negotiations would be craft an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012 by setting “a long-term global goal” to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the Bush plan, however, the goal would be “aspirational” and, therefore, voluntary. There would be no binding commitments, and each nation would be free to devise its own strategies for meeting the goal.
Bush History on Global Warming
President Bush has consistently opposed any plan that includes specific targets or binding commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which could have economic impacts, or that assigns more responsibility for solving the problem of global warming to developed nations such as the United States than to developing economies such as China, India and Brazil. Those were the two reasons Bush gave for refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol along with 141 other nations.
The president made his announcement just days before a meeting of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations was set to begin June 6, 2007, in Heiligendamm, Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will chair the meeting, has placed a high priority on getting G-8 member nations to commit to meeting specific goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions significantly by 2050.
Before Bush made his announcement, his administration had been widely criticized for trying to weaken or delete any references in G-8 documents to specific emissions goals or to the objective of trying to hold average global temperature increases to about 2 degrees Celsius. Those goals are based on recent reports by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
International Reaction to the Bush Proposal on Global Warming
President Bush has received faint praise in some quarters for finally acknowledging global warming as problem worthy of attention and committing U.S. involvement in finding a solution. But most reactions to his announcement have been loud objections to his proposal to start a new ad hoc process, separate from the framework established by the United Nations, that would accomplish nothing before the end of his term and would likely slow international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and control global warming.
Germany and Great Britain came out strongly against the Bush proposal and in favor of keeping all international climate negotiations within the U.N. framework.
“For me, that is non-negotiable,” Merkel said. “In a process led by the United Nations, we must create a successor to the Kyoto agreement which ends in 2012. But it is important that they flow from the United Nations.”
Hilary Benn, Britain's international development secretary, offered a similar response: “I think it is very important that we stick with the framework we've got,” Benn told The Observer. “In the end, we have to have one framework for reaching agreement. I think that is very clear.”
Environmentalists Respond to the Bush Plan for Global Warming
“This is a transparent effort to divert attention from the president's refusal to accept any emissions reductions proposals at next week’s G8 summit,” said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. “After sitting out talks on global warming for years, the Bush administration doesn't have very much credibility with other governments on the issue.”
Many environmental experts took an even stronger stance in assessing and responding to President Bush’s proposal.
“There is no more time for longwinded talks about unenforceable long-term goals,” said David Doniger, climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We need to get a serious commitment to cut emissions now and in the G-8.”
“We have a very clear sense about what the President won't do to fight global warming, but he refuses to say what action he is willing to take,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “We know the Bush administration has opposed the Kyoto treaty and spurned past offers of other countries to work together to solve global warming. We also know he refuses to take the action and implement the solutions that will make the United States the leader on this issue, and he continues to encourage his agencies to ignore their own scientists' warnings. Instead, we have seen delay after delay with calls for more talk and more research when the facts are already in.”
