President Bush signed an energy bill in December. He may be seeking a climate bill now. (Charles Dharapak/Associated Press)Both at home and overseas, there are signs that the White House — after seven years of charges that it was failing to accept and act on science pointing to dangerous human-caused climate change — is aiming to repair its legacy on the issue. Trial balloons are lofting and swirling.
According to the Washington Times today, the White House reached out last week to Republican lawmakers to test whether Mr. Bush could get support for domestic legislation on climate. So far, the only bills put forward aiming to limit greenhouse gases have come from Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans, most notably Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and presidential candidate.
According to the article, by Stephen Dinan:
Bush administration officials have told Republicans in Congress that they feel pressure to act now because they fear a coming regulatory nightmare. It would be the first time Mr. Bush has called for statutory authority on the subject. “This is an attempt to move the administration and the party closer to the center on global warming. With these steps, it is hoped that the debate over this is over, and it is time to do something,” said an administration source close to the White House who is familiar with the planning and who said to expect an announcement this week.
The story indicated that the proposal was strongly rebuffed by Republican congressional leaders.
In Europe, in the meantime, there have been some hints that the Bush administration is closing in on a specific long-term goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions — possibly 50 percent by 2050. European leaders have proposed a similar cut, but from a baseline of 1990. It’s not clear yet what the final number might be. (China and India have to agree, as well.) President Bush last year pledged to extract a long-term goal from this group of countries by the end of this year, and his term.
The third round of talks comes in Paris Thursday and Friday. If specific numbers emerge, this would be the first hint of a particular (if non-binding) target and timetable. The talks are independent from the ongoing United Nations treaty negotiations on climate. The White House has also signaled recently that it would be willing to sign a treaty containing binding restrictions on greenhouse gases — if China signs on as well.
Back in Washington, Chris Horner, a lawyer for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group opposing regulatory solutions to environmental problems, told me that the outreach to Congress
on possible legislation “smacks of desperation.” Those in the administration seeking to build a positive legacy on the issue, he said, “cannot seem to recognize a Congress that is terrified
of being the ones saddled with hitting the economy as it enters recession and with the voters already sharpening the pitchforks over $3 gas, just to say to a noisy minority they ‘did something’ (which,
of course, would be doing nothing at all under any scenario or set of assumptions)….”
[UPDATE 3:15 p.m.] Eileen Claussen, a former Clinton administration official and head of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said that any legislative effort
pushed by Mr. Bush would have to navigate between conservative Republicans opposed to any gas limits and the Democratic majority, which would fight any proposal that lacked mandatory limits.
“If it’s really weak it isn’t going to go anywhere,” she told me. “And the right doesn’t want this administration to do anything.”
Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, fielded several questions about the Washington Times story in the morning press “gaggle” and essentially confirmed the main points. For those who are interested, I’ve posted the relevant portion of the transcript below:
Q Can you talk a little bit about this reported global warming initiative, the timing on that, and what that would entail?
MS. PERINO: Sure. I think that Steve Dinan did a pretty good job this morning of capturing where we are in terms of the discussions. This is — I would say right now there’s no presidential statement scheduled, although that could change.
Just a little bit of background on this. So the President of the United States over the past several years has been working on a series of climate change initiatives. One of them last year — it was in the 2007 State of the Union, he announced the 20-in-10 program, which is to reduce traditional gasoline use; replace it — replace 20 percent of it with renewable or alternative fuels within 10 years. Congress passed that bill. It passed fairly quickly and it didn’t quite go as far and as fast as the President wanted it to. It’s more like 20 percent in 15 years. But the President was happy to sign the bill.
In addition to that, last June, for those of you who were there at the G8 — actually right before the G8, in May of 2007, the President of the United States had a conversation about — had a speech about moving forward to make sure that we had a post-Kyoto process, post-2012 process, which we are now entering into; and one that would include the developing nations — in particular, China and India — because if you don’t include the developing nations and their emissions continue to rise, and we ratchet ours back, basically what you do — all of the economic models show that you shift jobs from here over there, and you continue to increase emissions because they don’t have any limits, and you’ve not solved the global problem of global climate change.
So we entered into the G8 last year with a major economies meeting process. This has been well received. We had the first meeting in September of 2007. There’s another meeting I think — there was a meeting in Bali with the U.N. framework convention on climate change in December 2007. In January I think there was another meeting. And then this coming Thursday and Friday, there’s yet another major economies meeting that’s going to be hosted by President Sarkozy in France. So the conversations that this administration has been having I would characterize as ones that have been ongoing, over many years, but increasingly so since last year as we initiated the major economies process.
So what you have now is two basic things. One, you have this major economies meeting coming up in which the President said, we all need to get to a goal by December 2008. Countries are working towards that and that — the goals would — I think the G8 this year is when they were thinking of every country being able to come forward and talk about what those goals are.
In our process, we say that you can have a goal, but then for your plan, you can come up with the — with your own plan. We’re not going to ascribe how you’re going to solve the problem to other countries. They’re going to have to come up with that on their own because everyone has different fuel mixes and different economic mixes and industrial tracts.
Secondly, the other thing that you have is a regulatory train wreck with many different laws, such as the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. All have, coming up soon, regulatory paths on climate change that they were never meant to deal with; the original construction of these laws were never meant to deal with them.
And so what you have coming up in June now is a legislative debate. I believe Senator Reid has scheduled the first week of June to bring up a couple of the different bills that are on the path for debate on the Senate floor. And what the President and his team have been working towards is, one, our views on — on especially the Warner-Lieberman bill, are well known, we cannot support it. But our views on how to do this the right way are things that we are talking about. And so I think that’s what — that’s how I would characterize the conversation today.
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Q Follow-up on the global warming thing. I guess I’m just wondering why would this legislation, if you call it the legislation, propose that — would it be along the same lines of what you’ve already proposed, in terms of these voluntary self-imposed limits on emissions and government buildings and all that sort of thing; kind of the technology approach you’ve taken. And second, are you at all concerned about Democrats taking your legislation and making it regulatory anyway?
MS. PERINO: Well, one, I don’t know how the Democrats would do that, because they’re not in the executive branch. But two, I have to take issue with the suggestion that the President has only put forward voluntary measures. It’s absolutely not true. Within the past — I just talked about the 20-in-10 program, and last year we also did new requirements on fuels and vehicles; that’s mandatory. The CAFE limits that are going to be increased is mandatory; that has to be done, it’s not voluntary. Appliances, lighting inefficiency, those are mandatory. And we just cut a new agreement with the countries that are a part of the Montreal Protocol, of which, if you look back at the reporting, the effects of that agreement could actually cut greenhouse gases much more than anything Kyoto would have done.
Q Most — a lot of it is executive orders, right?
MS. PERINO: No, a lot of that — the CAFE thing is — the CAFE proposal is legislation. So was the lighting inefficiency piece. So was the alternative fuels replacement, with the 35 billion gallons being replaced — replacing traditional fuels.
Q So what —
MS. PERINO: While there have been voluntary programs, there are also many mandatory programs. And this issue is extremely complicated and complex, and before people who don’t cover this issue every day start to cover it, I would just encourage you to look back or to come to us. We have a lot of different experts. Jim Connaughton is available, Dan Price, myself, Fratto, Stanzel — they understand it well. We can help provide a lot of context and background on this as we move forward.
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