Bush sidesteps G8's climate change agenda

President Bush has come forward with his great new plan for tackling climate change. He has rejected global carbon-trading programmes, he has rejected the "two-degree" strategy, whereby the rise in world temperatures would be slowed to 2C this century by cutting emissions, and a leaked memo from the US says that the US has a "fundamental opposition" to the European target of global halving of 1990 emission levels by 2050.

Bush, instead, prefers to rely on free-market mechanisms and technology to solve the problem.

"The world is on the verge of great breakthroughs that will help us become better stewards of the environment," Mr Bush declared. Under his scheme, individual countries would establish "midterm management targets and programmes that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs".

The problem with Bush's logic is that, in his world, we are always "on the verge" of great breakthroughs. However, here on planet Earth, we realise that this problem is not going to go away by waiting for "great breakthroughs" that mean we can basically carry on as before, but that we are all actually going to have to do something.

Bush's speech is really no more than an attempt to hide the fact that he is dragging his feet and doing nothing, but - of course - Tony Blair stepped forward to applaud Bush's inaction.

Tony Blair hailed Mr Bush's remarks as a step forward. "Without America and China, the rest of the world frankly can agree whatever it wants but it's not going to have the effect of improving the environment," the Prime Minister said during his visit to South Africa. "The important thing is, for the first time America is saying it wants to be part of a global deal."

This should be taken as seriously as Blair applauding Bush's plan to allow Ariel Sharon to hold on to settlements in the West Bank. Then, as now, one couldn't help but notice that what Bush was saying was actually the opposite of everything that Blair had ever stood for, but Blair seems to feel that America should be applauded for taking any kind of stance at all, as if the US is on a different planet from the rest of us and that this problem really doesn't effect them at all.

However, the reaction from people not beholden to Bush for possible US lecture tours was much more negative.

But for critics, Mr Bush's proposals were simply more of the same - a transparent attempt to create the impression that the US was not dragging its heels.

The speech was proof that the administration had a "do-nothing" approach to global warming, said Daniel Weiss, the climate strategy director at the Centre for American Progress think-tank. The European and Japanese pleas for action "add to the voices of corporations such as Dow, Shell, General Electric and General Motors". But they were falling on deaf ears, he added.

Bush has literally done nothing about this problem since he came into office. It reminds me of Reagan's reaction to the Aids epidemic in the eighties when, scandalously, he stood still - refusing to invest any money into research - because he believed it was an illness that only affected homosexuals and, therefore, because of the religious beliefs of his base could be safely ignored. Reagan's presidency should be viewed through that callous prism just as Bush's should be viewed through how he handled the most important issue that faced him whilst he was in office: global warming. In both cases, both Presidents deserve to be remembered as abject failures. Neither recognised the global implications of a problem that was right in front of their noses.

Harold Macmillan’s celebrated answer to a journalist’s question about what can most easily steer a government off course was, "Events, dear boy, events." In the case of both Bush and Reagan, they refused to even acknowledge the importance of the event that was, in actuality, defining their Presidency.

Just as Reagan paid scant lip service to Aids, so Bush does the same on the subject of global warming.

Here's what Bush said yesterday and what it actually meant:

'In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it.'

Translation: In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll ratings. So now I have to look interested.

'The United States takes this issue seriously.'

Translation: Al Gore takes this issue seriously, his movie was a hit, and it's causing me no end of grief.

'By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gases.'

Translation: By the end of next year, I'll be weeks away from the end of my presidency and this can be someone else's problem.

'To develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gasses, including nations with rapidly growing economies such as India and China.'

Translation: We will look as busy as we can without doing anything.

'The new initiative I am outlining today will contribute to the important dialogue that will take place in Germany.'

Translation: The new initiative will put the brakes on the much more robust proposal the Germans are putting forward. As long as dialogue continues, we won't have to abide by any decisions.

'Each country would establish midterm management targets and programmes that reflect their own mix of energy sources and needs.'

Translation: Nobody will be obliged to take any painful decisions.

'Over the past six years, my administration has spent, along with the Congress, more than $12bn in research on clean energy technology.'

Translation: But we've spent a lot more mollycoddling the oil and gas industries. We're the world's leader in figuring out ways to power our economy while looking after the environment.

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