George W. Bush

Foreign media take a more discerning look at Bush’s climate meetings this week

Once again, the foreign media is not fooled by Bush's PR stunt, while the U.S. media buys the White House line. The U.K.'s The Independent labeled this a "Greenwashing Climate Summit" in its headline, and opened their story with:

For the first time in 16 years, a major environmental conference opens in Washington, hosted by the Bush administration. But no concrete results are expected, and that -- say European participants -- is the point of this high-level meeting.

Far from representing a Damascene conversion on climate change by President George Bush, the two-day gathering of the world's biggest polluting nations is aimed at undermining the UN's efforts to tackle global warming, say European sources. "The conference was called at very short notice," said one participant. "It's a cynical exercise in destabilising the UN process."

So how does the AP puff piece on the summit begin?

Press struggles to write something interesting about vacuous Bush speech

Well, Bush gave a speech on climate change today, in conjunction with his Major Economies Meeting. "What I’m telling you is, we’ve got a strategy,” the man said. That’s one way of putting it. As expected, Bush said nothing new, just some banalities about how we all recognize the problem and we all have to […]

Bush and climate through the years

Reuters has a handy timeline tracking the evolution (or stasis, as it were) of Bush’s climate policies.

Bush’s climate summit promises no change in U.S. stance

Bush may be hosting a climate summit this week, but "what he will not do, officials said, is chart any shift in policies." Specifically, the Washington Post reports:

Top Bush administration officials said the president is not planning to alter his opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse gases or to stray from his emphasis on promoting new technologies, especially for nuclear power and for the storage of carbon dioxide produced by coal plants.

This is straight from the Frank Luntz playbook on how to seem like you care about the climate when you don't: Technology, technology, technology. Yada. Yada. Yada. Delay, delay, delay.

Bush parallel climate meetings intended to avoid binding treaty

Bush is blowing off the U.N. climate meeting happening this week, choosing instead to focus on his parallel international climate meetings. I ask you to savor the multiple absurdities embedded in this paragraph in the NYT: Mr. Bush’s aides say that the parallel meeting does not compete against the United Nations’ process — hijacking it, […]

Rove believes that Bush’s policies will look good in hindsight

Karl Rove thinks history will be kinder to President Bush than the public and the pundits are today:

I believe history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president's leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest. President Bush will be viewed as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century.

Not!

On the path set by Bush's do-nothing climate policies, future generations -- including historians -- will be living in a ruined climate for centuries, with brutal summer-long heat waves, endless droughts, unstoppable sea-level rise, mass extinction, and on and on. If we do stop catastrophic global warming, it will only be because succeeding presidents completely reject Bush's approach. Either way, President Bush will be viewed as a short-sighted leader who ignored the key test of the 21st century.

Rove actually has the chutzpah to claim:

Irony of the day

In the course of a Washington Post story on the fate of the House and Senate energy bills, we hear this about Bush’s feelings on climate change legislation: But Bush still opposes unilateral U.S. action. Sometimes, anyway.

Spike in gasoline prices is partially due to Bush’s weak energy policy

The Washington Post reported that President Bush made the following claim at a fundraiser:

Do you realize that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that cut greenhouse gases last year?

The Post noted immediately that the White House "was unable to substantiate the claim" because they really don't know what other industrialized nations have done. But does Bush deserve any credit for the unusual U.S. drop in emissions? I say yes, but only in a perverse way -- his failed energy policy (and the failed reconstruction of the Iraqi oil industry) helped set the stage for sharply increased gasoline prices in 2006, which moderated oil consumption.

The White House claims that "progress is due in part to natural causes, innovation and market forces, and emerging federal, state and local policies." Uh, how do "emerging federal policies" change anything? Answer: they don't until they actually emerge, which for this administration will be pretty much never.

Bush lies misleads on global warming, again

The Prez has a long history of misleading the nation on climate change. Not unlike his father, who promised on the stump to be the "environmental president," Bush promised on the campaign trail in 2000 to reduce CO2 emissions, then promptly reversed this position once he took office.

But that's in the history books. Last week, according to the Washington Post, he told an audience at a fundraiser in Washington state:

Do you realize that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that cut greenhouse gases last year?

One problem: that's, er, misleading at best. A spokesperson for the Council on Environmental Quality admitted so after the speech, saying that although the U.S. did slightly reduce energy consumption and thus emissions last year, it couldn't rule out the possibility that other nations did as well.

"We are making sure the President is aware of that," the spokesperson said.