President Bush, you´ve no doubt heard, spoke about national climate change strategy yesterday. He called for the U.S. to halt increases in greenhouse emissions by 2025, mainly by cutting pollution emitted by power plants. And he recommended achieving that goal via voluntary emission reductions and technological innovation -- and pointedly not by adopting cap-and-trade legislation.

 

Here are a handful of news outlets´ accounts of Bush´s address and the reaction thereto: Associated Press / Bloomberg / BusinessWeek / New York Times / Reuters / Washington Post / Waste News

 

The dust hasn´t settled, but it seems the Bush administration has budged a bit in its position on the greenhouse-climate issue. It also appears that the prevailing opinion is that Bush´s approach is still not ambitious enough to achieve what is needed -- prompt, sizable emission cuts that don´t seriously damage America´s economy, or any other nation´s.

 

Ultimately, I´d wager President Bush´s address will do little or nothing to alter the course the nation is on regarding reducing greenhouse emissions. All three candidates in line to succeed Bush have said they support cap-and-trade legislation. The enactment of a cap-and-trade bill looks more and more like the inevitable endgame in this debate. The train is rolling downhill, and gravity is doing what gravity does.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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