"EU told to be bolder on carbon emissions"
"The EU must be bolder in tackling carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from road transport if it wants to combat climate change, according to the US ambassador to the European Union."
The front page leader in the current Christmas/New Year's issue of European Voice, a Brussels-based weekly read by European Union officials and people who do business with the EU, must have made more than one reader sputter over their Belgian beer. The Bush administration, which has been the world bad boy on establishing environmental norms ever since it said "hell-no-Ky-oto," has now found religion and is going to preach to the converted.
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray said that legislation just approved by the US Congress to improve vehicle fuel efficiency was more ambitious than European legislation. Referring to the Energy Independence and Security Act, which seeks to improve fuel efficiency by 40% by 2020, Gray said: “This is more aggressive than anything Europe has proposed.”
This is like the prodigal son, having been away for years living it up and spending the inheritance, returning to the fold and lecturing his siblings on the benefits of payroll savings and compound interest.
Gray was referring to Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed by President Bush on December 19, 2007, a week after the Bali Climate Change summit. In Bali, the US delegation appeared set on diluting the substance of the agreement, then was welcomed back to the consensus fold, only to have the White House raise "concerns" over the agreement its delegation had just signed. It was the climate change equivalent of a "signing statement."
My purpose here is not to trash the Energy Independence and Security Act, which appears to be the fruit of the Democratic Congress elected in November 2006, and has a number of worthwhile initiatives, with a view “to move the United States toward greater energy independence and security, to increase the production of clean renewable fuels, to protect consumers, to increase the efficiency of products, buildings, and vehicles, to promote research on and deploy greenhouse gas capture and storage options, and to improve the energy performance of the Federal Government.”
No, I am taking issue with the public diplomacy tone-deafness of this administration, which, ever since Inauguration Day 2001, has exhibited passive-aggressive attitudes towards the environmental policies adopted by large swaths of the world - and then has the gall to lecture our European partners on the need to be "bolder" when it is finally forced by a Democratic Congress to (belatedly) start to go in the right direction.
Referring to the Energy Independence and Security Act, which seeks to improve fuel efficiency by 40% by 2020, Gray said: “This is more aggressive than anything Europe has proposed.”
Look, 40% fuel efficiency improvement is fine in my book, but when the same sentence includes a date like 2020, that sounds like a lifetime away. Here in Europe, everyone knows that a legacy-obsessed American president will try to get everything - from Israel/Palestine to energy/environment - jammed into the last year of a lamentable reign. The follow-through - like the solution to US involvement in Iraq - falls to the next US president.
The imperious preaching of the Bush administration and its patent hypocrisy only add insult to past injuries inflicted on 'Old Europe.' I doubt anybody at all is even listening, nor should they.
Posted by: dick la roche | January 07, 2008 at 02:05