Bush and Global Warming in 2008:

For anyone interested in the state of the Washington debate over responding to global warming, Peter Baker’s front-page story in today’s Washington Post is a must-read. The article chronicles the evolution in President Bush’s thinking (if not his policy positions) on global warming as Bush starts considering his Administration’s legacy. Here’s the nutgraph:

The coming year offers a final test of whether Bush is willing to move beyond the policies of the past seven years and embrace more aggressive measures, including a mandatory limit on carbon emissions with pollution credits that can be bought and sold — a system known as cap-and-trade. If presented such legislation by Sens. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Warner (R-Va.), supporters hope, Bush might sign it.

We here at Warming Law would be delighted, of course, if President Bush wants to make leadership on global warming the hallmark achievement of his final year in office. But last week’s waiver decision makes us deeply skeptical that this is what’s likely to happen. Indeed, Baker notes (without fully developing) the less altruistic motivation behind Bush’s “leadership” in 2007:

By 2006, though, something had begun to change. A host of governors, including Republicans such as California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, moved to impose their own plans to curb greenhouse gases. Major corporations, nervous about a patchwork-quilt approach, started agitating for a single national policy.

In other words, as we explained here, the state leadership on global warming has brought polluting industries (Bush’s most loyal base) to the federal regulation table, seeking federal action that displaces state experimentation.

The WaPo article is here, via the MSNBC site.

Let me be less polite than Warming Law in assessing this situation: Any notion that Bush is having a change of heart about global warming, driven by his exposure to science, is so laughably naive that it’s pathetic.

Bush will do as little as he possibly can on this issue. And the only reason he took any steps whatsoever, as in the ridiculous energy bill that was just passed, was to head off more aggressive action at the state-level, as mentioned above. Remember how quickly the EPA refused to grant California a waiver so they could regulate CO2 emissions? And remember the rationale? They claimed that the new CAFE standards in the energy bill took precedence.

I can’t make it any clearer: This is a president who cares far more about keeping businesses happy than doing anything to reduce the impact of global warming.

But now Bush is concerned about his precious legacy, so we’re seeing articles about how he’s having a slow-motion epiphany on environmental issues, all triggered by the purest of actions–listening to scientists. It took this long for Bush, the all-time champion of “voluntary” CO2 cuts, to realize what a mess we were in? Really? Really???

The good news is that January 20, 2009 isn’t that far off, and the US will very likely have a far more enlightened president on that day.