2008 Woodie Awards
Bush to set long-term goals for curbing greenhouse gas emission
By: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Issue date: 4/16/08 Section: Nation
WASHINGTON - President Bush plans to outline today the way he thinks the United States can stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and issue a challenge to lawmakers on climate change legislation.
In a Rose Garden speech, Bush will lay out a strategy rather than a specific proposal for "long-term" and "realistic" goals for curbing emissions, White House press secretary Dana Perino said yesterday. She did not disclose details of his announcement and would not say whether the president would propose any kind of mandatory cap on greenhouse gases.
Bush wants every major economy, including fast-growing nations like China and India, to establish a national goal for cutting the emissions believed responsible for global warming. In his remarks, Perino said, Bush will "articulate a realistic, intermediate goal" for the United States.
The speech will precede a meeting tomorrow and Friday in Paris of the world's largest carbon polluters. Representatives from more than a dozen countries are expected to attend the meeting, the third in a series of talks that Bush organized last year.
A new global warming pact is being crafted to succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It requires 37 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the only industrialized nation not to have ratified Kyoto, but it agreed with nearly 200 other nations at a conference in Bali in December to negotiate a new agreement by the end of 2009.
The White House search for a new climate initiative comes amid growing indication that mandatory action to address global warming is highly likely, if not now, in the next year or so. At the same time, the administration is facing growing pressure to regulate carbon dioxide under the federal clean air law.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been told by the Supreme Court that carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, is a pollutant and must be regulated if the EPA determines it is a danger to health and welfare.
In a Rose Garden speech, Bush will lay out a strategy rather than a specific proposal for "long-term" and "realistic" goals for curbing emissions, White House press secretary Dana Perino said yesterday. She did not disclose details of his announcement and would not say whether the president would propose any kind of mandatory cap on greenhouse gases.
Bush wants every major economy, including fast-growing nations like China and India, to establish a national goal for cutting the emissions believed responsible for global warming. In his remarks, Perino said, Bush will "articulate a realistic, intermediate goal" for the United States.
The speech will precede a meeting tomorrow and Friday in Paris of the world's largest carbon polluters. Representatives from more than a dozen countries are expected to attend the meeting, the third in a series of talks that Bush organized last year.
A new global warming pact is being crafted to succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It requires 37 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the only industrialized nation not to have ratified Kyoto, but it agreed with nearly 200 other nations at a conference in Bali in December to negotiate a new agreement by the end of 2009.
The White House search for a new climate initiative comes amid growing indication that mandatory action to address global warming is highly likely, if not now, in the next year or so. At the same time, the administration is facing growing pressure to regulate carbon dioxide under the federal clean air law.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been told by the Supreme Court that carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, is a pollutant and must be regulated if the EPA determines it is a danger to health and welfare.
Be the first to comment on this story