Burning Bush

In a desperate attempt to avoid complete irrelevancy without actually having to do anything, President George Shrub last week presented what according to the BBC he claimed is

an "ambitious" new target of halting growth in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. ...

Mr Bush said the new target should require emissions "well below" projections given in the 2002 climate strategy.

"There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies." ...

The new technology would combine with nuclear power and "clean coal" to help meet the targets, Mr Bush said.

Right. Unspecified "new technologies" plus nukes and the mythological "clean coal," the latter of which was offered up, presumably with a straight face, just over two months after the DOE canceled plans to build a prototype "clean coal" power plant. What's the line about old wine in new bottles?* Newsday quoted Edmund Chang, a professor of marine and atmospheric sciences and a member of the IPCC, as saying this was a step in the right direction but added the program is vague and contains "no concrete steps."

Other experts were equally critical.

"In his eighth year, the president has just proposed a path on global warming weaker than the campaign pledge he made in September of 2000 and broke three months into office," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In fact, even allowing for full implementation of all the pledges about energy efficiency and the like, under Bush's program in 2025 the US's output of greenhouse gases will be nearly one-quarter above the level it produced in the UN benchmark year of 1990.

"With current policies, the greenhouse-gas emissions of the US will increase by 18 percent between 2005 and 2025," [International Energy Agency] chief economist Fathi Birol told AFP.

"If you compare this with 1990 levels, by 2025 there will be plus 38 percent.

He added: "If the (newly announced) policies and measures - energy efficency, renewables, all the policies - are implemented, you can take off about 15 percent from this."

"So it means an increase of about 23 percent between 1990 and 2025, but only if the policies are implemented and respected."

Meanwhile, the European Union has promised that by 2020 it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below its 1990 level and has offered to make it a 30% cut if the US and other rich nations follow suit. (Even at that, it's at the lower end of the cuts the IPCC has called for.) Some, in fact, have done better than just promise: The UK, which apparently is serious about addressing climate change, has a level of greenhouse gas emissions that is already 16.4% below 1990 levels.

But instead and despite that, we have before us in this country an "ambitious" and "responsible" proposal from the Shrub gang that will leave us pumping out 23% more climate-screwing pollution than we did 35 years earlier, an "ambitious" and "responsible" program that was coupled with a warning to Congress to go no further on regulating emissions.

Asked in Paris on Thursday as to the likely figure for 2025, the head of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, Jim Connaughton, said: "It will be slightly above where we are now and significantly below where the analysts have projected where we would otherwise be."

Where we are now is 16% over 1990 levels and even Bush's own people are openly admitting that under his "ambitious, responsible" program, emissions will actually increase. No wonder the Beeb was able to quote Carl Pope of the Sierra Club as saying "Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming."

And so, following are a few post-its about global climate change. All guaranteed Earth Day-friendly.

Footnote: Something the articles didn't cover and about which I still have to wonder is how the WHS** intend to count "reductions." The 2002 plan to which Bushie referred used a measure of "greenhouse gas intensity," which was a ratio of greenhouse gas emissions per million dollars of GDP. I wrote a couple of years ago:

Get it? As long as GDP increases faster than the output of greenhouse gases, you get to say that you are cutting emissions even as they continue to grow. It's like saying that if one year I make $30,000 and have $5,000 in debts and the next year I make $33,000 (an increase of 10%) and my debts are $5,250 (an increase of 5%), I owe less money than I did before. Unfortunately, nature doesn't count it that way. Just like my debtors are concerned with how many dollars I owe them, not with what portion of my income it represents, so, too, nature is only concerned with how much CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are being produced, not with the size of the economy that produced them.

Perhaps this newer-than-new, grander-than-grand, "ambitious, responsible" program counts actual emissions, not some bogus and meaningless ratio. But until I see it confirmed, I'll have my doubts.

Another Footnote: Clinton, McCain, and Obama have all called for tougher policies, including caps on emissions. Which is good. Then again, Shrub made a lot of similar promises in 2000. So don't count on it.

*Actually, the original saying was about new wine in old bottles, but it works this way, too.

**WHS = White House Sociopaths