Don't Hold Your Breath

The Guardian reports Downing Street officials claiming that George Bush is on the brink of a tide change in the US government's position on global warming.

George Bush goes green? Would that were so but don't hold your breath.

"Bush and Blair held private talks on climate change before Christmas, and there is a feeling that the US President will now agree a cap on emissions in the US, meaning that, for the first time, American industry and consumers would be expected to start conserving energy and curbing pollution.

"'We could now be seeing the beginning of a consensus on a post-Kyoto framework,' said a source close to the prime minister. 'President Bush is beginning to talk about more radical measures.'
The move will be seen as part of a wider repositioning of the Bush government after its comprehensive defeat in last autumn's mid-term elections.

"A change of heart on the environment was signalled earlier this month when the US administration unexpectedly announced that polar bears were now an endangered species because their habitat in the US state of Alaska had suffered from melting ice sheets caused by global warming. The government is now required to act on threats to the bears' survival. The EU has its own so-called cap and trade scheme, under which industries are given a quota of carbon dioxide emissions: if they exceed the limits, they must pay for extra credits that can be bought from cleaner industries - an incentive to firms to go green.

"Downing Street is increasingly confident that the arguments pushed by Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the recent Treasury report on the cost of global warming, that doing nothing will eventually prove more costly than trying to avert catastrophe are now gaining in momentum. However, Stern warned: 'The US will work it out for itself. Nobody will be telling them what to do, and nobody should.'"

Yeah, sure. You could fill a book with the acquired wisdom of George Bush, grand promises of reformation and vision. Time and again he's shown - for six years - that what he says means very little or nothing at all. In reality, for Bush to take any meaningful action at this point would be for him to paint a scathing indictment of his deceitful performance for the first three quarters of his administration.

Can Bush change? Sure, he found God, didn't he? Will he? That will be apparent very quickly because if the Bush administration is to reverse course and try to at least undo the damage he has caused these past six years, he will have to quickly put in place dramatic and meaningful changes.