Issue #250 After spending Wednesday morning with the Pope, Bush stepped up to the Rose Garden lectern to announce his bold plan to…wait for it…let emissions rise for SEVENTEEN -- yes, 1-7 -- more years. And then in 2025 -- well after we've spewed enough to CO2 to make the planet a hotter mess than Lindsay Lohan -- Bush proposed to finally halt the growth of emissions and then, "so long as technology continues to advance," we can finally begin to actually cut emissions. For a moment I thought the president would then break into his trademark smirk and say "just joshin' ya!” and then proceed to spell out a plan that was not in fact a total joke. Unfortunately the president was in fact serious; leading me to wonder what America had done to deserve the colossal cosmic joke known as the past seven years. Proving at long last that he has no shame, the president then proceeded to attack "some courts" that have tried in vain to order his administration to take global warming seriously. Of course one of those courts is the Supreme Court, which he and his administration have stubbornly defied for over a year now. (One would think that he'd be a little nicer to them, considering, you know, a certain other 5-4 decision.) Bush then went on to complain about some "antiquated" laws that happen to be getting in the way of his do-nothing agenda. You know, some real over-the-hill, time for the glue factory specials like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. Luckily, in 2005 the Republican-controlled Congress only granted the President the power to waive any and all laws for any reason whatsoever in certain cases. Reaction was swift and damning, with our own Carl Pope saying: "The president is throwing a Hail Mary to polluters in a last-ditch effort to stave off any meaningful action on global warming. Under the president's plan we’ll need a real miracle to save us from global warming." But perhaps the German Environment Minister said it best when he called the president's sham speech "losership, not leadership." Oh schnäpper! Photo Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/bush-presser-smirk-cesca.jpg |