At Reuters today:
When the Pope mentioned Bush had come from the G8 summit, Bush said: "I did — your old country — and it was successful … A lot of different opinions, but it was good."
Oh yeah, it was successful. The vision for a smart, intelligent, program to reduce greenhouse emissions was put forth by Bush in 2002. He, along with our Congress, rejected the Kyoto framework as he should have and now….4 years later the rest of Europe has seen the light and come around to Bush’s way of thinking:
The basic Kyoto philosophy is this: Set ever lower mandatory targets, ratcheting down energy use, and by extension economic growth. The program was viewed by environmentalists and politicians as a convenient excuse for getting rid of unpopular fossil fuels, such as coal. In Kyoto-world, governments exist to create draconian rules, even if those dictates are disguised by "market" mechanisms such as cap-and-trade.
President Bush’s approach is opposite: Allow economies to grow, along the way inspiring new technologies and new forms of energy that lower C02 emissions. Implicit is that C02-control technologies should focus on energy sources we use today, including fossil fuels. In Bush-world, the government is there to incentivize industry, coordinate with it, and set broad goals.
Take your pick. Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3 percentage points over 1995 to 2000. Only two countries are on track to meet targets. There’s rampant cheating, and endless stories of how select players are self-enriching off the government "market" in C02 credits. Meanwhile, in the U.S., under the president’s oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were eight percentage points lower than in the prior period.
Europeans may be slow, but they aren’t silly, and they’ve quietly come around to some of Mr. Bush’s views.
Not only that, the major producers of CO2 have already signed a pact with the US which gets all the industries in each country involved in solving the problem while allowing their economy to grow. Which is pretty much what this new Europe agreement sounds like.
Bush wants more nuclear power, Europe is starting to come around to that also:
President Bush has pushed hard for more nuclear, with its bountiful energy at zero C02 cost. This was long anathema to British and German politicians, whose populations are virulently anti-nuke and who balked at any official recognition of nuclear benefits. As Kyoto has ratcheted down other energy sources, nuclear has looked better. By 2005, the G-8 document out of Gleneagles contained an explicit acknowledgment that nuclear energy mattered. The EU’s energy pact, signed earlier this year, also contained a nod to nuclear. Europe has also gone from trying to banish coal, to using tech to make it cleaner.
So in the end Bush gave Europe a graceful way to bow out and admit they were wrong. While I am not in agreement that global warming is manmade, if there is going to be a effort to reduce CO2 then do it without destroying our economy.
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My take is that Bush got done at the G8 summit because he went in there protecting the US position but had to agree to give “serious consideration” to emissions cuts. Something the US has never done to date. It means the next US president has the room to get the agreement on track.
He agreed to the same plan he pushed for in 2002, where in the world did you get the idea that he capitulated?
“Serious consideration”? Give me a break.