Is Bush Changing His Global Warming Views?

Feb. 7, 2007 — -- Is President Bush changing his views on global warming?

ABC's Betsy Stark recently traveled with the president on Air Force One to a Caterpillar plant in Peoria, where he talked about his economic agenda and promoted his trade policies following his State of the Union address.

In her exclusive interview, she asked the president about his views on global warming and the recent call by CEO's of 10 major companies to place mandatory emission caps on greenhouse gasses that are heating the planet. Caterpillar is one of 10 corporations that have joined this "Climate Action Partnership," urging President Bush and Congress to limit the emissions generated from burning fossil fuels.

In the past, Bush has maintained there is "fundamental debate" over the cause of global warming, which puts him at odds with the vast majority of the world's climate scientists.

"I have said consistently that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused," he said in remarks to reporters at the White House in June 2006.

As a candidate for president in 2000, Bush called global warming a serious problem and proposed mandatory cuts in harmful emissions from power plants. He moved away from that promise once in office, maintaining the reversal was due to an energy crisis.

The White House praised a long-awaited U.N. report issued Feb. 2 in which scientists said they were "more than 90 percent" sure that the dramatic global warming now under way is "unequivocal" and spurred by human activity, but the administration disagrees with calls for mandatory caps on CO2 emissions, which the report didn't address. The president himself has not yet spoken about the findings of the report.

"We have spent more money on technology and also research than anybody else -- $9 billion on basic scientific research strictly into global warming, which very likely is more than the rest of the world combined," White House spokesman Tony Snow said today. "So the idea that somehow we don't understand the arguments, or we're not contemplating or taking serious the arguments about carbon caps --