George W Bush’s commitment to mitigating climate change

It’s common knowledge that when the Bush administration wants to avoid press attention it releases information on a Friday so it gets buried in the weekend news hole. One reason we know the US news media is not doing its job is there is no “Monday’s Revelations” feature that focuses on the Friday releases. That sort of spotlight could end this anti-democratic practice in a matter of weeks.

DeSmogBlog reports the latest hide-it-on-Friday report in this post and explains why the GWB administration wanted to bury it here. The Youth Climate Movement caught it too.

The report in question is Fourth Climate Action Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by the US Department of State. The United States agreed to participate in this process in 1992 (under GWH Bush) and produced the first three reports in 1994, 1997, and 2002. The fourth report issued in the dark of the news night says, in essence, “We don’t give a damn. You might care about climate change, but we care about GDP growth.”

I am, as ever, more than a little miffed by GWB’s deceptive commitment to reducing carbon intensity (emissions/GPD dollar) rather than actual reduction in carbon emissions. It’s Orwellian. It’s a prime example of truthiness.

From the report’s Executive summary:

• The United States is committed to continued leadership on climate change.
• In 2002, President Bush announced plans to cut GHG intensity — emissions per unit of economic activity — by 18 percent by 2012. The Nation is on track to meet this goal.

It boasts about the size and growth of our economy:

The U.S. economy is large and vibrant, driven by a growing and geographically dispersed population. The United States has the highest real gross domestic product (GDP) in the world.U.S. GDP has experienced significant growth since 2000; by 2005 it increased by 13.4 percent to slightly over $11.1 trillion (in constant 2000 dollars).

It also notes the relationship between how we measure economic activity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions:

In particular, the economic slowdown in 2001 and early 2002 had a major impact on energy use and, correspondingly, GHG emissions.

In other words, we stopped growing the economy — in the traditional sense of economic growth — and GHG emissions slowed down. It would be nice to see someone on the national political stage suggest this as a way forward. Let’s stop economic growth as it is understood in the traditional way and instead begin to distinguish between benign and malignant growth. Growth is not homogeneous.

Here’s why the report bothers to mention the year 2002:

Meeting President Bush’s commitment to reduce the GHG intensity of the U.S. economy by 18 percent by 2012 will prevent the release of more than 1,833 Tg CO2 Eq. to the atmosphere, adding to the 255 Tg CO2 Eq. avoided in 2002.

A footnote tells us:

At the time this commitment was made in February 2002, U.S. GHG emissions intensity was expected to improve by 14 percent from 2002 to 2012 under a Business As Usual reference case. The President’s goal, therefore, was expected to improve GHG intensity by 4 percentage points over the expected 14 percent.

Come again? I had thought Bush was being deceptive simply by virtue of talking about decreasing emissions per GDP dollar while total emissions were increasing, but he already knew that emissions per GDP dollar were likely to decrease by 14 percent if he did nothing at all. George W Bush took the decisive action to push that 14 percent all the way to 18 percent. What a brave stance! In addition, the report claims credit for avoiding emissions 255 Tg CO2 Eq. (an accidental consequence of the recession) and preventing the release of more than 1,833 Tg CO2 Eq. by 2012 (a projection measured against doing nothing). Nice work if you can get it.

A single honest sentence makes it through this haze of truthiness:

From 2002 through 2012, GHG emissions are expected to rise by 11 percent to 7,709 Tg CO2 Eq.

So in spite of the great accomplishment of the GWB administration in offering the target of 18% reduction in carbon intensity (a meaningless measure of emissions per GDP dollar), actual carbon emissions (the measure that matters) will increase by 11%.

This is how the cancer of the Bush/Cheney/Rove axis destroys democracy from the inside. If Orwell were here he’d say “I told you so.” Colbert who coined the term truthiness says, “What we’re doing is bringing democracy to knowledge.”

credits

Top photo of Deception Falls by Travis S offered with a Creative Commons license.