Warmed Over

President Bush delivers much talk and little action on climate change.

PRESIDENT BUSH strode to the lectern in the Rose Garden yesterday and once again passed up an opportunity -- perhaps his last -- to do something meaningful on climate change. "Today, I am announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025," he said. That pronouncement was a weak and inadequate response to the imperative that the United States provide leadership in combating global warming, a responsibility Mr. Bush has shamefully ducked throughout his presidency.

Mr. Bush spoke on the eve of today's Major Economies Meeting (MEM) in Paris, where the nations that produce the most carbon dioxide emissions will lay the groundwork for another conference on climate change in conjunction with July's summit of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations. He acted months ahead of the year-end deadline the MEM set last September for national goals. But the goal he set was far too modest: The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for a reduction of between 50 and 85 percent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 -- not merely a leveling off.

To achieve his low-ball goal, Mr. Bush announced no serious initiative but merely recast the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which was originally promoted as a means of weaning the nation off foreign oil. Those reductions not achieved through hiking fuel economy to 35 mpg by 2020, adding 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel to the nation's supply by 2022, and increasing the efficiency of lights and appliances would "depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies," the president said.

Mr. Bush did issue a set of "core principles" that he said should guide bill drafters on Capitol Hill -- which at least implies an openness to further legislation during the coming months. The "principles" were standard fare: Don't raise taxes or gasoline prices, don't impose regulatory costs that hinder American business, and don't abandon nuclear power. But with the Senate due to debate in June a bill from Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) that would establish a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, Mr. Bush's strictures about the right and wrong ways to craft legislation were unhelpful. What's needed is explicit presidential support for the Lieberman-Warner plan or other binding measures to reduce emissions. Mr. Bush once again ducked that decision -- and in doing so reinforced what, for now, is a terrible legacy of inaction on one of the most serious problems he has faced as president.