Clean Water Action President John De Cock Statement on President's Planned Climate Speech

Today's Rose Garden climate speech by President Bush is just the latest attempt to run out the clock on global warming without taking meaningful action. The President's failure today to endorse mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions means he has left this challenge for the next President and Congress.

President Bush is correct today in identifying the need to deal with carbon emissions generally, and emissions from coal plants in particular. But the President largely remains where he was eight years ago when he pledged to restrict carbon dioxide from coal plants, and instead caved into big energy companies and did nothing.

During the last eight years of voluntary programs, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise, and today's announcement of long-range, non-binding goals will do nothing to reverse that trend. For their last few months in office, Clean Water Action calls on the Bush administration to stop interfering with efforts by states to move ahead with clean cars emissions standards, stop censoring the science of global warming, and drop their opposition to mandatory federal limits on global warming pollution.

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