Roguely Stated

With Chancellor Merkel headlining this week’s G8 meeting, President Bush moved to stage left for a warm-up act on global warming. His volte-face on climate change encountered a chilly reception: Speaker Pelosi called it a “profound disappointment,” and many scientists expressed skepticism due to Bush’s “legacy of stalling, back-pedaling and undermining of international talks.” Yet other experts held out some measure of “conditional [support for]… a potentially useful tool for gaining new consensus.”

Perhaps we could have seen this coming – nearly two months after the Supreme Court’s landmark EPA ruling and four months after the Brits leaked a related story. But evidently someone forgot to tell NASA’s administrator, who, the same day as Bush’s announcement, questioned whether global warming was really problem (audio).

What remains unclear is “where is this all going?” Perhaps Bush’s plan is merely a gesture intended to temporarily mollify G8 members. Perhaps it is a sign that he is increasingly concerned with his legacy. Or perhaps it is rooted in good faith belief that “bottom-up” foreign policy works better than Kyoto-style “top-down” frameworks.

Regardless of his motivation, if Bush seeks to unilaterally change the terms of the global warming debate (snubbing Europe once again), then his warm-up act is likely to be a resounding flop. But if the President has experienced a genuine change of heart, then he needs to appoint a credible point person on climate change. Someone who can appreciate the complexities of issues like ethanol, tax credits, and nuclear power.

President Bush should also start conceptualizing of global warming as a matter of national as well as economic security. Americans and Chinese
alike have no desire to wreck their economy by single-handedly “carry[ing] the burden for cleaning up the world’s air,” as then-Governor Bush asserted in the 2000 debates.

The United States has a unique responsibility and vested interest in preventing the threat of global-warming-induced resource wars, famine, and natural disasters. And in his remaining time in office, the President needs to take that responsibility seriously.