President Bush is planning an international summit meeting to address climate change with voluntary emissions targets. The Post dutifully tells readers that "the proposal marked a clear shift for Bush." Obviously the Bush administration wants the public to see this summit as a bold new initiative, but it is hard to see how it amounts to a "clear shift." Folks in the real world will recall that the action for the whole world on global warming is the Kyoto agreement, which Bush has ignored. Guess what, he is still ignoring it. Where's the clear shift? President Bush has also been opposed to mandatory emission targets. Guess what, he is still opposed to mandatory emission targets. Where's the clear shift? He has also consistently exaggerated the likely economic costs of curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. It looks like he is continuing to do so since the article begins by reporting that President Bush invited world leaders to "take part in a climate change summit aimed at establishing voluntary goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions while sustaining growth." In fact, there are no serious models that show that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will stop economic growth. Of course measures to reduce emissions may slow growth, but this is also true of the war in Iraq. President Bush has never even expressed concern about the growth lost due to the war. So again, where's the clear shift? This summit proposal looks like yet one more attempt at delaying any concrete steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and obstructing the international efforts already in place to address global warming. In other words it is a continuation of the policy that President Bush has pursued on global warming since he took office, but in order to be effective, it must be presented as a "clear shift."
--Dean Baker
