Will Voluntary Action Work?
September 29th, 2006 by Carbon CoalitionIn this interview with the Wall Street Journal today, President Bush clears the air on recent talk that his administration is creating a national formal policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He believes it is very unlikely that “the modest voluntary goals set by his administration to reduce so-called greenhouse-gas emissions” would fail, but in the event they do he said he might consider reevaluating his current path. Figuratively speaking he cleared the air on the issue of global warming, but literally with modest voluntary goals he’s not “clearing” anything.
William Sweet, news editor of the magazine Spectrum and author of Kicking the Carbon Habit, writes this op-ed for the New York Times today. While praising California for taking the lead on mandatory emission reductions, he’s reluctant to celebrate any action on climate change that isn’t national: “Its goals may well be too ambitious for the state to meet and be based on a flawed premise that greenhouse gas control can be done ad hoc and state by state…No matter what happens, the end message will surely be that there’s no real substitute for concerted national action.”
This weekend… Governor Mitt Romney will be in Concord on Saturday as the NH GOP Convention Keynote Speaker. The town of Hanover is hosting a “Cool Cities Walk to Stop Global Warming” on Sunday from 1:00-3:00 beginning at the Howe Library. On Monday Joel Harrington, Vice President for the NH Audubon, will present to the Great Bay Stewards at their Annual Meeting as a part of the Carbon Coalition Speaker’s Bureau.
