White House Denies Climate Policy U-Turn

Jan. 14, 2007 — -- The State of our Union … is suffering from global warming?

The White House is flatly denying a British report today in The Observer newspaper in which British officials say they expect President Bush to reverse himself during his annual State of the Union address on Jan. 23 and commit to an agreement to curb greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States.

"[The story] is inaccurate on all fronts," a White House official said, "and especially regarding the State of the Union."

While the Bush administration denies the British report, there are signs at the White House that might fuel such speculation.

Just last month, the Bush administration recognized the effects of global warming by adding polar bears to the list of "threatened" animals under the Endangered Species Act. U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne acknowledged that the polar bears' environment was slowly deteriorating from melting ice sheets caused by global warming.

At the time, it was unclear whether the announcement was part of a larger plan to modify U.S. climate change policy, but British officials say it may have been the beginning of a strategic U-turn.

A source close to British Prime Minister Tony Blair told The Observer, "President Bush is beginning to talk about more radical measures. We could now be seeing the beginning of a consensus on a post-Kyoto framework."

Bush declined to sign the Kyoto protocol first proposed in 1997 and put into effect last year. The agreement among 160 countries, made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), called for "industrialized countries to reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent compared to the year 1990."

President Bush agreed with the overall goal of Kyoto, but refused to sign an agreement he said is flawed.

"America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility," Bush said in 2001. "To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change."