Is President Bush stalling on Climate Change?
At the G8 summit in Germany, President Bush appeared to have come round to the view that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced in the fight against climate change. A closer look at what he actually said reveals that nothing has really changed. Reduced emissions may be years away and it could all be window dressing for the next election when climate change will be a big issue.
A report by Andrew Grice in The Independent said “… President Bush gave some ground under pressure from Mr Blair and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and summit host. But he watered down Germany’s demand for a commitment to a 50% cut in emissions by 2005 from 1990 levels. Instead the G8’s declaration said the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases should ’seriously consider’ following the EU, Canada and Japan in seeking to halve emissions by 2050.
“Mr Bush committed the US to a United Nations-led process but gave himself an important escape clause by making clear his support was conditional on China and India signing up to the worldwide deal. It is also unclear whether the target would be as ambitious as it looks as no baseline was set…”
Will the U.S., China and India stall indefinitely while blaming each other? Will it be too late by the time agreement is reached?
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