In his State of the Union Address tonight, President Bush
offered many promises and platitudes on clean energy and global warming, but
paltry few policy solutions. The
President failed to outline support for key policies that would actually put America
on a path to solving global warming and forging a clean energy future.
In five specific areas, the President’s remarks fell short:
First, the President announced his support for renewable technologies. Unfortunately, this is in direct
contradiction to his threats to veto legislation last year that would have
established a national renewable electricity standard and extended crucial tax
incentives for the renewable energy industry. These two policies are critical
to insuring the long term growth of renewable energy in this country. In the
short term, the President must work with Congress to extend the clean energy
tax incentives that expire by the end of this year as soon as possible. He must
also voice his support for a national renewable electricity standard.
Second, in a bit of deja vu, the President mentioned global
warming in his address tonight but failed to endorse the key policies needed to
actually solve the problem. Most notably, the President stopped short of
calling for a mandatory U.S.
cap on global warming pollution, even though such a cap is essential to
achieving the pollution cuts scientists say are needed in order to protect
future generations from the worst effects of global warming.
Third, the President highlighted the signing of legislation
that will require cars to achieve 35 miles per gallon by 2020. He failed, however, to mention that on the
very same day that he signed the energy bill into law, the U.S. EPA denied California and twelve
other states the right to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles. This
misguided decision by the Bush administration flies in the face of overwhelming
public support for policy-makers to combat global warming and serves as a
further illustration of President Bush’s refusal to take the actions necessary
to protect our environment and public health and to fight global warming.
Fourth, the President encouraged the construction of new
nuclear power plants. Yet nuclear energy
is an expensive technology that does not offer a solution to global warming. Nuclear
facilities will cost billions to construct and take decades to come on line,
and then will have security and waste disposal problems. Serious action to combat global warming will
mean investment in the cleanest, cheapest and quickest ways to reducing carbon
emissions—renewables and energy efficiency.
Fifth, the President endorsed further investment in
so-called “clean coal.” However, clean
coal is a myth. Coal is an inherently dirty fuel that pollutes our air, our
water, and our pristine places. If we are going to be serious about fighting
global warming then we need to move away from dirty fossil fuels like coal, oil
and natural gas and toward clean renewable sources. We should invest in truly
clean technologies like wind, solar, biomass and geothermal and not continue to
sink billions of dollars into dirty coal.
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Environment California
is a nonprofit, non partisan statewide environmental advocacy organization.
