The Editors have their take on Bush’s recent climate change speech up today:
President Bush’s announcement last week that he will convene a conference of the Big 15 greenhouse-gas emitters is a fair bid to turn the tables on the Europeans and slam the door on Son of Kyoto. As the New York Times put it: “For six years, Europeans have pleaded with President Bush to seize the initiative in the campaign against global warming. Now that he has, many [in Europe] are even more frustrated.”
Bush has firmly rejected hard emissions caps and international tradable-emissions schemes (cap and trade). In his recent remarks, he emphasized that emerging nations such as China and India should be able to set their own emissions goals relative to their economic circumstances, and press above all for technology transfer. Translation: Any realistic greenhouse-gas-emissions program will have to recognize that developing nations such as China and India must grow. This is true also of the U.S., whose economy continues to expand even as Europe stagnates. At least for the intermediate term, the emissions of such nations will grow too. By proposing to convene the Big 15 emitters under U.S. leadership, Bush threatens to eclipse the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which brought us Kyoto. Not bad for a day’s work.
Whole thing here.