Despite Utter Uselessness, ChimpCo Will Retain GHG "Intensity" As "Goal"

[hatrack]

OSLO (Reuters) - Washington is sticking to goals for curbing greenhouse gases under a yardstick shunned by most of its allies as too easy. President George W. Bush said he has no plans to toughen the targets -- trimming the amount of heat-trapping gas emitted per dollar of economic output -- despite speculation that he was considering a revision because of worries about global warming.

"We're meeting those targets," he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Friday. "So long as we're meeting those targets,...then I think we ought to pursue the current track we're on." The U.S. goal, of an 18 percent cut in emissions per dollar of gross domestic product in the decade to 2012, is far less stringent than cuts in total emissions favored by almost all other industrial nations under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.

EDIT

"We're on target for the status quo," said Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington, saying that Bush's goal would take no effort since high oil prices are prompting efficiency. "I don't think that the number 1 greenhouse gas emitter and richest economy in the world is setting the example needed -- it's not enough," she said.

EDIT

"In general terms (emissions intensity targets) are not a good idea," said Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Edenhofer said it was simpler to set a ceiling for emissions because emissions intensity is also governed by economic growth and population. "From my point of view this is a political trick. The Bush administration says 'yes, we are doing something' but the only one who is defining an appropriate target (in the United States is California governor) Arnold Schwarzenegger," Edenhofer said.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092900343.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. You know you're in trouble...

...when Hummer boy is being held up as a shining example of environmental responsibility.

[hatrack]

2. Yesiree

Nauseating intellectual dishonesty on the part of President Lancelot Link - his advisors have noticed a trend that's been underway since the development of the Newcomen engine back in, oh, 1713 or so and are in effect trying to claim it as a policy victory.

Just sickening.