Bush sets US 2025 deadline for greenhouse cuts

Bush said that the Kyoto Protocol would have required the US to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The impact of this agreement, however, would have been to limit our economic growth and to shift American jobs to other countries — while allowing major developing nations to increase their emissions.

“Countries like China and India are experiencing rapid economic growth — and that’s good for their people and it’s good for the world. This also means that they are emitting increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases — which has consequences for the entire global climate,” Bush said.

“So the United States has launched — and the G8 has embraced — a new process that brings together the countries responsible for most of the world’s emissions. We’re working toward a climate agreement that includes the meaningful participation of every major economy — and gives none a free ride,” he said.

“We’re doing a lot to protect this environment. We’ve laid a solid foundation for further progress. But these measures — while these measures will bring us a long way to achieving our new goal, we’ve got to do more in the power generation sector,” Bush said.

“To reach the 2025 goal, we’ll need to more rapidly slow the growth of power sector greenhouse gas emissions so they peak within 10 to 15 years, and decline thereafter. By doing so, we’ll reduce emission levels in the power sector well below where they were projected to be when we first announced our climate strategy in 2002,” he said.

He said that bad legislation would impose tremendous costs on the US economy and on American families without accomplishing the important climate change goals. “The wrong way is to raise taxes, duplicate mandates, or demand sudden and drastic emissions cuts that have no chance of being realised and every chance of hurting our economy,” he said.

“The right way is to set realistic goals for reducing emissions consistent with advances in technology, while increasing our energy security and ensuring our economy can continue to prosper and grow,” Bush said.

At the White House the Press Secretary Dana Perino said that the way to go about climate change is to collectively agree on a goal that is accountable to all.

“You need to look back at the September 2007 statement. Because through the major economies meeting process, in order to keep this process on track — by having China and India at the table, that’s how you do that. We will be able to collectively agree on a goal that all of us will be held accountable by,” she said.