One suspects China will find much to like in the Bush administration's global warming plan which the president announced April 16 in the White House Rose Garden:
A national goal (voluntary, or aspirational, if you will), allowing greenhouse gas emissions to continue to increase (albeit, as per the plan, at a slower rate) until 2025, when the growth would stop and emissions would start to decline; and allowing emissions from coal-fired power plants to grow and peak within 10 to 15 years, before they begin to decline.
China, which has coal to burn, has resisted all entreaties to accept mandatory controls on its emissions, contending it's the responsibility of industrial countries to take the lead. For its part, the Bush administration has rejected mandatory controls on US emissions if rapidly developing countries, such as China, are not also required to curb their emissions. It's a game of environmental chicken on a global scale and there is nothing in the Bush plan to make the Chinese blink.
The president offered few specifics on how to achieve the 2025 target. And even if the administration's goal for reducing emissions is met within the proposed timetable (and, of course, the responsibility for making that happen will fall to others), it is well short of what most leading scientists believe is necessary. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contends that global GHG emissions must begin to drop by 2015 to avoid dangerous climate change.
The administration also used the occasion of the speech to reiterate its opposition to proposed legislation to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions and proposals to regulate emissions under existing environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act.
In the run-up to the speech, one wire service report said that Bush would "announce his vision for fighting global climate change," calling it a "marked turnaround" for the president. Actually, there is not much there for anyone looking for a marked turnaround.
.
Leave a comment