Bush floats goal for emissions tied to warming

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Wednesday proposed a new target for stopping the growth of U.S. emissions tied to global warming by 2025, but environmental groups were quick to criticize the stand as merely undercutting stronger proposals in Congress and by several states.

The president called developing new technolgies the key to curbing greenhouse gas emissions over the long term, and added that coal-fired  power plants could do their part by slowing emissions' growth a bit faster than the 2025 goal.

"To reach our 2025 goal, we will need to more rapidly slow the growth of power sector greenhouse gas emissions so that they peak within 10 to 15 years, and decline thereafter," Bush said in a speech made at the White House.

"By doing so, we will reduce emission levels in the power sector well below where they were projected to be when we first announced our climate strategy in 2002," Bush said. "There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies."

Bush's cautious gambit falls far short of European goals and comes as Congress is about to consider more ambitious targets and ahead of international climate change negotiations in Paris.

The Sierra Club was among the activists to challenge Bush, noting that some scientists feel global emissions should be cut by 20 percent by 2020. "Merely halting the growth of emissions is grossly insufficient," it stated.

"The president is throwing a Hail Mary to polluters in a last-ditch effort to stave off any meaningful action on global warming," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.

'Cap-and-trade' approach
Bush's new goal for curtailing greenhouse gas emissions is an attempt to short-circuit what White House aides call a potential regulatory "train wreck" if Congress doesn't act on climate change. The president's speech is aimed at shaping the debate on global warming in favor of solving the problem while avoiding heavy costs to industry and the economy.

The Bush administration has been a staunch opponent of a mandatory so-called "cap-and-trade" approach to reducing greenhouse gases. While it has backed some mandatory programs, it has preferred largely voluntary measures to broadly address global warming.

In his speech, however, the president did not slam the door on discussing market-based approaches to stem the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

"We aren't necessarily against cap-and-trade proposals," White House press secretary Dana Perino said earlier this week. But she added quickly, "What we've seen so far from Congress is not something that we can support."

The president remains opposed to a Senate bill that would require mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions, calling that proposal unrealistic and economically harmful, Perino said.

'Unelected bureaucrats'
Bush spoke forcefully about concerns he has over a possible rush to address the Earth's warming through a hodgepodge of regulations under existing federal laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Senior White House officials last week told a group of conservative Republican lawmakers in a private meeting that the administration wants Congress to act on climate change to avoid regulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping — or greenhouse — gases under existing laws.

Perino says the administration is concerned about a potential regulatory "train wreck" as a result of climate-related court rulings.

"Recent court decisions hold the very real prospect that the federal government will regulate greenhouse gas emissions with or without a new law being passed," Perino said. "To us, having unelected bureaucrats regulating greenhouse gases at the direction of unelected judges is not the proper way to address the issue."

Several of the conservative GOP lawmakers who heard the White House presentation last week said they viewed it as a move toward endorsing a limited type of "cap-and-trade" emissions reduction proposal, targeting power plants, and a reversal of long-standing administration climate policy.

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