Corinne Ramey

Can a Speech Be Worse Than Silence? And Happy Earth Day from DMI!

This past Wednesday, Bush stood in the Rose Garden and gave a speech on the environment. He talked about climate change, global warming -- and actually acknowledged it exists! -- and even suggested some policies. Despite the other big news stories of the day -- the pope's visit and the Democratic debate -- mainstream media coverage lauded Bush's mere mention of climate change. "Bush Seeks Voluntary Curb On Greenhouse Gas Emissions," proclaimed the Washington Post and "Bush Sets Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goal" wrote the Times.

Sadly, the real story was not sunny. Bush's speech was, in a word, lame.

Granted, this isn't the first time that Bush has addressed climate change. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post chronicles two other speeches by Bush on climate change that were equally vacuous. In a "translation" of one of these speeches on the Huffington Post, blogger Andrew Gumbel gives his account of the meaning behind Bush's mostly empty words. For example, when Bush said, "In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it," Gumbel "translates" it as the following:

"In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll numbers. So now I have to look like I'm interested."

That translation could have just as well applied to Bush's most recent speech. To Bush's credit, he did look like he was interested. But the actual content of his speech was so low on policy solutions and concrete proposals that it's unlikely that it will accomplish much. In fact, Froomkim challenges that Bush's half-hearted words may be worse than none at all. "But in an era where a consensus has emerged that forceful action is required to save the planet, Bush's essentially empty words are not very different from silence. And to the extent that their intent is to subvert sincere attempts to find solutions, they're actually worse," he writes.

So what did the president actually say? He called for a new "national goal" -- in other words, non-binding -- to "stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025." But this target is significantly less than what scientists say is necessary to halt global warming and climate change. For example, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that global greenhouse gas emissions must drop by 2015 to avert "drastic climate change." Scientific research also suggests that greenhouse gases must reach 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, which is the amount proposed by the cap-and-trade systems of Clinton and Obama. As Grist's David Roberts puts it in much simpler language, "The targets Bush does announce would doom the planet. " Bush plans to go about achieving this way-too-low voluntary target mostly through reducing power plant pollution, but he also mentions the environmentally dubious biofuels and not-actually-clean "clean" coal.

So this Earth Day, we probably don't have much to be thankful for in terms of a president who will actually do much for the planet. But luckily, both Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed energy/environmental policy that -- if they could actually make it through Congress -- could put us back on track in terms of working with the rest of the world to stop global warming before it causes any more damage to the planet.

Feeling green, and want to check out some of DMI's energy/environment work? Here's some Earth Day recommended reading:

* DMI's report on congestion pricing
* Analysis of the environmental policies of Clinton, McCain, and Obama
* Conclusions on the presidential candidates' environmental policies
* Green jobs
* State of the Union analysis: Energy and environment section
* Pegeen Hanrahan, mayor of Gainesville, Florida, speaks about environmental sustainability on MayorTV

Posted at 6:45 AM, Apr 20, 2008 in Energy & Environment | Permalink | Comments (4)