So, Bush on climate change, sort of
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Posted on January 24, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Renewable fuels
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
So what did you think? I mean, besides the fact that this was one of the most passionless State of the Union speeches I have ever heard — until he finally got to Iraq…
Did you find much ecological hope there?
We didn’t — although I guess we have to acknowledge progress in that global warming was mentioned at all — as a happy byproduct of efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
The new ground broken: Bush articulated a goal to reduce US gasoline use by 20 percent over the next ten years. He will do this by pushing for higher fuel-efficiency standards and industry mandates to use more alternative and/or renewable fuels — up to 35 billion gallons by 2017.
One Washington Post writer put this in perspective. For instance, the 20 percent reduction in gasoline consumption is less than it seems:
The fine print: Administration officials said that the goal is 20 percent below projected annual gasoline usage, not off today’s levels.
You can see the problem here, the difference between coming below projections, and coming below current levels. The article explains why this doesn’t do a whole lot about US carbon emissions.
Bush wants to push for more ethanol production, but as this article notes:
…it would take more than last year’s entire US corn harvest to make enough ethanol to meet the target.
It will also put food production in direct competition with gas for our cars and SUVs.
One thing his speech did do was bring about a quick increase in oil prices, a market reaction to his call to double US strategic oil reserves, as a measure to enhance oil security.
Meant a nice rise in oil stocks, too. Exxon Mobil’s stock rose 2.2 percent.
No mention of Kyoto, no mention of the need to set international standards and regulations to reduce carbon emissions. This did not surprise us, sadly.
Of the proposals on energy, the Wall Street Journal reported today:
While the White House touted the energy agenda as one of the most significant parts of Mr. Bush’s agenda, achieving its goals rests on the uncertainty of technological breakthroughs, and the administration is promising relatively little money to subsidize what would be a major redirection in the country’s energy markets.
While asking Congress for the power to ‘reform and modernize’ fuel-economy standards, Mr. Bush continued to reject calls for legislation mandating specific higher fuel standards…
And the president avoided widespread demands to embrace new economy-wide caps on so-called greenhouse gases, instead asserting that greater use of cleaner energies would lead to a reduction in these emissions, widely believed to cause global warming. ‘The way forward is through technology,’ he said.
Well, not entirely, Mr. President. The kinds of technologies that can allow us simply to proceed apace do not yet exist, will take decades to develop, and will fall far short of business-as-usual. Those that exist now can help us through a transition away from the fossil-fuel era of industrialization, but only with a tangible change in how we live.
Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote today about the biofuels approach much touted by Bush these days — and why this technology will fall short of what is needed, while creating a demand that will be unsustainable ecologically. They are a piece of our energy future, but only a piece.
The NY Times also talked about the shortcomings of Bush’s energy agenda:
…many cautioned that the goals would be difficult to attain, might do little to reduce gas emissions and could lead to higher food prices as farmers cater to energy demand rather than food production.
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said, “The big numbers may sound impressive, but this is nothing more than stay-the-course on global warming.” The proposal, Mr. Clapp said, represents a 1.5 percent cut in carbon emissions a decade hence. “They will still go up by 14 percent over the next decade.”
And if liquefied coal, which produces double the heat-trapping gases of regular gasoline, is part of the alternative-fuel mix — as coal-industry lobbyists and environmental groups say is the case — the emissions reductions would fall significantly.
Democrats who care about global warming were disappointed:
On a political level, Mr. Bush faces a Congress that is now controlled by Democrats, some of whom criticized him on Tuesday for proposing little to reduce the production of heat-trapping gases implicated in global warming.
“I am disappointed,” said Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico and chairman of the Senate Energy Committee. He said Mr. Bush was “completely silent” on energy efficiency and reduction of carbon dioxide from electric power plants, which contribute 40 percent of these emissions.
This is hardly the necessary call to national mobilization to address climate change and ecological overshoot that the times require. But, of course, we didn’t expect that of Mr. Bush. We can’t expect that of this Congress either. No, that mobilization will be up to us to create. Only then will our political leaders be moved to something a bit more inspiring than what we heard last night. It has to begin with telling our people the truth.
In the end, for purposes of security — and here we don’t mean geopolitical security, but security for the conditions that allow for life on this planet — the first and most fundamental step is to reduce consumption, drastically. This means energy conservation, this means far greater efficiency, this means reorganizing our economy away from fossil fuels and a philosophy of ‘growth’ as the driver for economic health, this means changing our lives in ways that will make them more meaningful, more sustainable, more healthy, more whole.
And that would be ecologically hopeful indeed.
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