http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070604/ap_on_re_eu/g8_summit
Is he just blowing smoke to appeal to some of the moderates who associate republicans with pollution and global warming? Or is he actually serious about committing to reduce the impact our industry makes on the planet?
To me it sounds a lot like the time he got us all excited about going back to the moon and possibly establishing a permanent base there. All talk, no funding or support. What do you think?
Nobody’s even blowing smoke, they’re just telling the compliant journalists that they’re doing so. And the non-compliant ones are either reporting in the centre of Rostock, or nowhere to be seen.
Its amazing how some people still refuse this obvious outcome of global pollution.
This is another disaster made only worse by the worst president in the American history…
I really have no idea how some people would rather keep making and keep destroying the planet, its amazing how money can blind someone…
I think Bush is a lame duck with little more than a year and half left in office. It doesn’t really matter what he thinks or doesn’t think about global warming, especially since the Dems won both houses of Congress in '08. We have a whole crop of presidential candidates who are now or soon will be putting forward their proposals, and we have a Democratic Congress that should be doing the same thing. I’m much more interested in what Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain have to say about the subject. We’re driving* off into the future, and I only see Bush when I look in the rear view mirror.
But if I had to guess, I’d say he is really happy to be not talking about Iraq. If Global Warming takes the focus off Iraq, then so be it. He knows none of his policies will ever see the light of day.
*In a zero emission vehicle, of course. 
What?! You’re prepared to make excuses based around him being a ‘lame duck’? 18 months to sit around and not do stuff?
I don’t know how much I agree about Bush’s ineffectiveness. Immigration reform got off the ground at least, and it was a HUGELY divisive plan he supported. I don’t think he’s ready to quit being the Deciderer yet.
A year and a half is still a pretty long time. The whole Iraq thing could be finished one way or another before the elections (I know, it’s a long shot) and a lot of other political stuff could play out with major consequences, like the whole attorney firing fiasco.
Anyway that was kind of a rant. The point is I still think there’s room for Bush to influence policy before his term is over.
But not to implement policy, and whatever he does is likely to be changed by his successor before it’s put in place. Same goes for immigration. That might actually be a harder issue to tackle, politically, than global warming.
There are multiple levels of answer here:
I don’t see why he would appeal to moderates at this late date. To what end? For what purpose? As for blowing smoke…well, I suppose John Mace’s assertion that this is a way to take the focus off of Iraq is plausable.
Well…I think here we have to look at personal views vs political views. IMHO, personally Bush actually DOES believe in GW, and DOES want to (personally) reduce his carbon footprint, etc etc (I reason this by looking at what he has done in his personal life on his ranch for both of these theories). POLITICALLY I don’t think it matters one way or the other what Bush thinks…he’s a lame duck at this point and there is simply no way in hell he could push through a meaningful agenda to cut America’s overall carbon footprint…even if he wanted too (again, from a political perspective).
Personally (there is that word again ), I think that this is getting into Bush thinking about his ‘legacy’ and wanting to do something just for the hell of it…as a lame duck he doesn’t have to do or say anything to his base at this point if he doesn’t want too. What diff? He’s gone in a year and a half. By the same token, nothing he DOES say or do is really meaningful at this point (outside of Iraq perhaps)…so he can open this can of worms (for the Republican’s) all he wants without having to worry about his base.
Pretty much exactly the same thing IMHO. The moon is something I think Bush is PERSONALLY in favor of, but just isn’t willing to carry the political water (even if there was any left in the well FOR him to carry 
) to do more than lip services.
-XT
Well, he’s still a Republican, and I assume wants to be succeeded by a Republican. I can see why he would want to take the sting off of the anti-environment aura surrounding the party, and all he has to do is say “we are aware of the problem and are discussing a solution” without actually doing anything important that would disturb the waters.
It’s just a spoiler to head off the international UN process and it’s fooling no one.
:dubious:
Again I have to ask…why would Bush care? What do you suppose the UN can do about GW that it hasn’t already done…and why would Bush care one way or the other?
-XT
You are kidding right? Why does Bush prefer to go back to Square 1 with a US-led initiative rather than the US join an international process that is ongoing? It’s entirely in keeping with the Bush regime’s ‘do nothing about global warming that might hurt the US economy’ approach. And the UN isn’t able to ‘do’ anything about GW. Any more than it can wage wars. You do understand what the UN is?
An international treaty organised in an international forum like the UN could do plenty though. We had one and Bush refused to sign up.
Why, in your opinion if it’s no skin off his nose, won’t he play ball with the UN?
True, but if he were willing to grapple with global warming in a genuine way now, he and the Dems could negotiate a deal that would get through Congress, get signed, and become law now rather than in 2009.
I dunno if that ‘tipping point’ is really 10 years away or not, but time really is of the essence here. With respect to CO2 reductions, the next two years shouldn’t be pissed away if we can help it.
But of course all the noises out of Bush’s mouth on the subject are a form of stallball. By making a chunk of the electorate think he’s going to address the problem, people think our leaders are dealing with the problem and they don’t have to think about it, which gives him the political room to kick the can down the road to the next Administration, which is his goal.
Um…why are you basically restating the point I was making? Did you READ what I wrote?
Lets go through it again (and to be fair, in more detail): You asserted “It’s just a spoiler to head off the international UN process and it’s fooling no one.” I basically said why would Bush care. Then you posted the above…basically restating my original point…why would Bush care? Its pretty clear he doesn’t respect the UN. From your own post above there isn’t anything the UN can do to the US to force us to do anything we don’t choose to do. I don’t see the value (or logic for that matter) in Bush doing this as a ‘spolier to head off the international UN process’. Maybe you could explain in more detail what you think that statement means to you (since I am not following you in light of the above post)?
And yeah…I’m well aware of what the UN is and is not. I’m ALSO well aware of how the UN is looked upon by a large percentage of Bush’s base…and probably by Bush and his administration (at least based on their actions toward the organization to date).
-XT
That’s what German Chancellor Merkel seems to think.
In the United States the President can’t ratify treaties. He can sign them, but they do not become ratified until the Senate votes to ratify. We already had a vote on Kyoto before Bush ever was elected, during the Clinton Administration, and it was defeated something like 97-2, such was its lack of viability.
Actually I looked it up. The Byrd-Hagel Resolution passed in the Senate 95-0, stating that the United States should not be a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol because it did not include binding targets and timetables, because it would seriously harm the economy of the U.S., and because it granted exemptions to countries like China.
In light of such an overwhelming rejection of the Protocol Clinton never even bothered to send it to the Senate, and neither has Bush. Considering one of the person’s whose name is on that resolution (Senator Byrd) is the most senior Democrat in the Senate and one of the few Senate Dems who voted against the authorization for force in Iraq, as well as one of the few who opposed the creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security, I’m not really sure Bush has ever had much of a chance of getting the treaty ratified. It was overwhelmingly opposed by Democrats (including very liberal Democrats) and Republicans and I don’t think the composition of the Senate has remotely changed enough to make its passage viable.
In response to the OP, it doesn’t really seem to me that Bush is “coming around” regarding global warming. I’ve never seen evidence he’s a “global warming denier”, just that he felt the Kyoto Protocol would put an undue burden on the economy of the United States and that as long as it exempted China (IIRC now the world’s largest CO2 emitter) it was a flawed treaty.
In fact Bush said this about the treaty awhile ago (this was a few years before China took over as the top CO2 emitter):
I could buy that, if sometime during the 76 months Bush has been in the White House, he’d had his people craft an alternative to Kyoto, and tried to persuade other nations to go along with his formula for containing CO2 production.
It’s one thing to say, “let’s not do X,” and propose no alternatives, if X is a solution in search of a consequential problem. But global warming, by Bush’s own admission, IS a consequential problem - just one it doesn’t feel like doing anything about, other than tsking Kyoto.
Supposedly that is to be the purpose of this conference.
Better late than never.
That’s sort of like saying if x congressman was really against x they’d be proposing legislation. Beating your heard against the wall isn’t a virtue. The Kyoto Protocol is a sacred cow at the UN, what are the realistic chances the UN is going to accept a Bush alternative? Shit, they’re already dismissing his attempt to do just what you ask right now, apparently that 76 months was better spent doing other things, the UN isn’t interested in his alternatives, why should he try?