By Staff
President George W. Bush's proposal to set a "long-term global goal" for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would have been a positive step forward in U.S. commitment to fight climate change had it occurred years ago.
Now, it's well past a day late and a dollar short.
"Aspirational" goals, as Bush's environmental adviser called them, hardly sound like an urgent call to arms.
More likely, it was a gesture to buff his battered image the week before he conferred with hiscolleagues at the Group of 8.
Eternal optimists may take solace in the fact that Bush's first climate change proposal means he is no longer in dential about an issue his administration defiantly ignored for years, but the bottom line is no specific reduction targets, no firm timetablefor reaching those goals and no specific means of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
What Bush did do is offer to convene a series of meetings with 10 to 15 countries, including increasingly influential China and India.
Each nation would determine its own goals for reducing emissions over the next couple of decades, then together they would arrive at setting longer-term goals, but there's no binding international enforcement framework.
Bush's plan skirts any U.S. commitment on how much or a timetable by when U.S. emissions might be tamed.
Ominously, Bush's plan surfaced the same day that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) head Michael Griffin went on National Public Radio (NPR) and questioned whether climate change constitutes "a problem we must wrestle with."
Our special interest-beholden government is incapable of solving any problem, from the budget and health care to immigration and climate change.
There needs to be action. The last thing we need is yet another tepid, half-baked gesture at doing something even further down the road to buy time until after the 2008 election's in the bag.