On April 16, 2008, President Bush spoke out on the climate change debate. In a Rose Garden statement, the president discussed the necessity of climate change legislation, but he did not openly endorse a cap-and-trade program as a way to combat global warming. The leading climate legislation in Congress, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (Lieberman-Warner) that is now awaiting debate by the full U.S. Senate would establish a cap-and-trade program as a means of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
The president noted that the United States is on target to achieving the goal he set in 2002 to reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent through 2012. In his statement, he also announced a new national goal of stopping the growth of United States greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
Urging against legislation that would start a "trade war" the president called for policies to spur investment in new technologies and incentives for new energy technologies that are "carbon-weighted" to make lower carbon emitting sources of power less expensive than higher emitting energy sources. He also reiterated support for more nuclear power, which is carbon free.
In his speech, the president was critical of the increasingly expansive interpretation of the Clean Air Act by the courts. He stated that in his view the Clean Air Act was not designed to deal with climate change, and that the Clean Air Act, along with the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, when used as a climate change mechanism, could hurt more than help efforts to fight climate change.
Environmental groups are criticizing the president's speech as likely to make the passage of Lieberman-Warner more difficult.
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