Sunday, January 27, 2019

President George W. Bush did not ignore the climate crisis/global warming. He even appropriated funds to fight it.

Don't get me wrong, there was much more he could have done to address this issue. But, this was before Katrina. It was before the panel of scientists at the IPCC agreed in large majorities about the absolute fact that Earth was warming due to anthropogenic causes.

But, George W. Bush did not through caution to the wind and completely dismiss the danger facing us all. He paid attention to global leaders when they addressed the issue of climate. He knew it was a global problem. He added an additional monitoring station to the already four existing stations. It was placed in California and it was to assist in determining the amount of GHGs coming from China.

"W" by the way was the first president to call China a polluter in a way that was to have the country address it's effect on climate. "W" also did not proclaim the USA was innocent or not responsible for these emissions. As a matter of fact President "W" Bush admitted the USA was the largest polluter on Earth during the time of his presidency.

No anniversaries of the National Parks he would visit them. He liked the idea his Interior Secretary, Gail Norton (click here) saw the early releases of the first California Condor to the Big Sur, California. That was the first time there were Condors at Big Sur in nearly 100 years.

George W. Bush did not hate conservationists or environmentalists, he simply was not Al Gore. He brought to the Endangered Wildlife the Public-Private Partnership and it began with the California Condor (click here). So, it was important to him that the program was successful and it was.

There is a huge difference between hating people that advocate changes to the USA because of the climate crisis and accepting the reality to put it into national policy in a way acceptable to the economics of the petroleum industry.

Dick Cheney's Energy Report of 2005 was devastating and turned loose the drills of fracking. Methan emissions went through the roof and it wasn't until President Obama did the industry have to contain the leaking methane that was a far greater danger than CO2 on a molecule by molecule basis.

The point is there are different Republicans in this country. Those that accept reality and try to do their best with policy while still unable to distance themselves from oil donations. The other Republican completely disavows facts and turns their back on the danger to Americans and people globally.

George W. Bush's conscience didn't bother him as much as it should to rein in the Cheney Energy Policy. But, he did make a good effort through the powers of his Executive Branch to honor Americans involved in conservation and environmental stewardship.

The current policies or should I say the lack of policies of the Trump White House is unconscionable. No president of this country has deliberately turned their backs on the American people's safety and health in order to make profits from ancient ideas of drilling with abandon. Trump is overseeing the worst increase in greenhouse gas emissions than any president in history. Heck, even in the days of Henry Ford, the government was warned about greenhouse gases and the benefits of the electric car.

Oil is a political issue. It has never been completely necessary in the way the pertroleum industry dominates the energy sector.

June 11, 2001

...There are only two ways to stabilize (click here) concentration of greenhouse gases. One is to avoid emitting them in the first place; the other is to try to capture them after they're created. And there are problems with both approaches. We're making great progress through technology, but have not yet developed cost-effective ways to capture carbon emissions at their source; although there is some promising work that is being done.
And a growing population requires more energy to heat and cool our homes, more gas to drive our cars. Even though we're making progress on conservation and energy efficiency and have significantly reduced the amount of carbon emissions per unit of GDP.
Our country, the United States is the world's largest emitter of manmade greenhouse gases. We account for almost 20 percent of the world's man-made greenhouse emissions. We also account for about one-quarter of the world's economic output. We recognize the responsibility to reduce our emissions. We also recognize the other part of the story — that the rest of the world emits 80 percent of all greenhouse gases. And many of those emissions come from developing countries....