A Change in Climate for Bush?
It's not something that we do every year--as opposed to watching election returns--but we actually watched and listened to some of Bush's State of the Union address. He started off on a good note, acknowledging Nanci Pelosi's historic placement as the first female Speaker of the House, and that bought him more goodwill from our household than he's had since he first took office. But the real kicker for us was this little bombshell:
America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment -- and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.Given that the Bush administration has spent the last six years trying to claim that there's no such thing as global climate change, it was quite a reversal. I kept waiting for someone from the administration to come out with a statement today that that particular sentence was "not operational," but it looks like, on paper at least, we're seeing a reversal of policy regarding climate change.
Of course, nothing he proposed was immediate or specific, say, like actually suggesting a 20% increase in the CAFE standards. Instead, he said, "we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks," which is good, but even better would have been to state exactly what those reforms will be. Clinton would have been specific, which is one of the reasons his addresses always went on for what seemed like hours.
Bush likes to promise things, and he certainly set out to make some promises last night that would appeal to his one hostile audience in the last six years. The Democrats gave him a hearing, and reserved their criticism for his Iraq policy, as delivered in the response by Webb afterwards. We'll be watching to see if he really follows through on his claims to increase energy conservation and efficiency.
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