Before departing for Europe yesterday, President Bush gave his first speech devoted to global warming, promising to begin a program to research the problem more thoroughly but giving little indication of policies he would recommend to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. He said the Kyoto treaty on climate change was “fatally flawed in fundamental ways,” particularly because it would exempt developing countries from mandatory caps on emissions. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has taken to criticizing Kyoto as a plan deliberately crafted by the European Union to make compliance much more easy for the E.U. than for the U.S.
