George Bush Global Warming Speech To Be Delivered Wednesday

From the AP via the Huffington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

President Bush, stepping into the debate over global warming, plans to announce on Wednesday a national goal for stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades.

In a speech in the Rose Garden, Bush will lay out a strategy rather than a specific proposal for curbing emissions, White House press secretary Dana Perino said Tuesday. She did not disclose details of his announcement and would not say whether the president would propose any kind of mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

And

The Environmental Protection Agency has been told by the Supreme Court that carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, is a pollutant and must be regulated if the EPA determines it is a danger to health and welfare.

At the same time, the Interior Department is under pressure to give polar bears special protection under the Endangered Species Act because of disappearing Arctic sea ice. A lawsuit has been filed under the same law for more protection for arctic seals.

Together these cases would pull the enforcement of the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act into the debate over climate change.

"Recent court decisions hold the very real prospect that the federal government will regulate greenhouse gas emissions with or without a new law being passed," Perino said. "To us, having unelected bureaucrats regulating greenhouse gases, at the direction of unelected judges, is not the proper way to address the issue."

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Okay. Bush is an oil man. One of his first acts as President was to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol--one of his more dubious actions as governor of Texas was to introduce sweeping pollution controls for industry, which were, get this, voluntary; obviously, his plan didn't end up amounting to much as far as reducing pollution goes. As a free market fundamentalist, Bush is, quite simplistically, very opposed to pretty much any government regulation which would hurt business in any way. I think it's safe to say that this speech isn't going to reveal any sort of major change of heart for our Chimp-in-Chief, even though I'm sure it will be presented as such.

So what's going on here?

White House spokesman Dana Perino essentially blurts out the answer: the machinery of government bureaucracy is closing in on them. That is, even though Perino asserts that it is somehow "improper" for the courts and regulatory agencies to do their damned jobs, that's what they're doing anyway. And it appears there are no "signing statements" or other bizarre kinds of legalese left for the White House to employ in defense of their arcane and self-destructive economic philosophy. They have to do something.

So they're doing some damage control, trying to get ahead of the issue before it drowns them. I'm betting that Bush's "strategy rather than a specific proposal" is going to be a lot of business friendly smoke and mirrors, with targets and good old voluntary compliance, amounting to nothing when it's all said and done.

But will the political establishment buy the bullshit this time?

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