Bush Climate Action Now? 'Bogus' - Schwarzenegger
US: July 14, 2008
WASHINGTON - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Sunday the Bush
administration did not believe it should do anything about global warming
and that any last-minute action before leaving office would be "bogus."
Schwarzenegger, a Republican whose state has pushed unsuccessfully for
federal permission to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, said on
ABC's "This Week" that any move at this point against climate change would
lack sincerity.
"If they would have done something this year, I would have thought it was
bogus anyway," he said. "You don't really have an effect by doing something
six months before you leave office ... it doesn't sound to me believable at
all. The sincerity is not there."
The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson, on Friday
declined to take steps to regulate climate-warming emissions under existing
pollution laws, more than a year after the US Supreme Court ruled that his
agency had the power to do just that.
Johnson said Congress should make rules to regulate these emissions and
called for public comment, 15 months after the high court's ruling.
Bipartisan critics said this stance virtually assures this administration
will do nothing more to curb greenhouse gases.
Johnson's move, Schwarzenegger said, "really means basically this
administration did not believe in global warming, or they did not believe
that they should do anything about it since China is not doing anything
about it and since India is not willing to do the same thing, so why should
we do the same thing?"
Schwarzenegger said the United States should lead the fight against global
warming, much as it did in the international race to put a person on the
moon in the 1960s.
Legislation to limit global warming pollution by using a market-based
cap-and-trade system died in the US Senate last month.
President George W. Bush joined other leaders of the Group of Eight
industrialized nations in Japan last week to pledge to cut emissions in half
by 2050. The pledge offered no baseline year and was open to interpretation.
California is ablaze this summer with record numbers of wildfires, which
Schwarzenegger said could be partially due to global warming. (Editing by
Doina Chiacu)
Story by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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