“It is a national
security issue, it is an economic issue, it is an
environmental and therefore a health issue, and above all,
it is a moral issue,” U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
expressed her heartiest moral obligation while she and her
fellow members of Congress and religious leaders were
marking the Earth Day 2008 by helping plant an elm tree
outside the U.S. Capitol on April 22, 2008.
President George W. Bush, whose administration has weathered
criticism for its stand on environmental issues, also
planted a tree to mark Earth Day 2008, an environmental
event that has now become increasingly political and
corporate in the United States. In addition, his
administration offered a plan to boost fuel economy for cars
and trucks to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil and curb
greenhouse gas emissions.
The plan would require the U.S. and international fleet to
average 32 miles per gallon (13.6 km per litre) by 2015. The
energy bill Bush signed in December requires that autos
average 35 miles per gallon (14.9 km per litre) by 2020, a
40 percent increase over the current standard.
Each year
on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of
the modern environmental movement. Starting its journey
since 1970, Earth Day promotes environmental awareness
around the world. It is the only event celebrated
simultaneously around the globe by people of all
backgrounds, faiths, and nationalities. Its mission is to
grow and diversify the environmental movement worldwide to
promote a healthy and sustainable planet. Earth Day on April
22, 1990, gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide
and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
But
according to the scientists, critics, environmental
activists, and general people, noting have been changed in
the celebration from previous years. However, last December
in Bali, Indonesia, a breakthrough deal forged by delegates
from 190 countries has revived world efforts to fight global
warming which may help push the debate to the front and
center of the U.S. political debate.
Even back
then, of course, the leaders in US understood that their
interests aligned more closely with Al Gore, who would go on
to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against global
warming. But very few of them came forward to control global
warming.
U.S.
policymakers predict there will be no law on climate change
under a reluctant Bush but presidential hopefuls --
including those from his own Republican Party -- already are
laying the groundwork for his exit in January 2009.
Americans are relying on policymakers, including the next
president, to tackle climate change.
Driven by public concern, all the candidates agree that
action is needed to slow global warming. It's clear that the
American people are looking for a presidential candidate who
will take climate change very seriously. Last year more than
three voters in 10 said they would take a candidate's green
credentials into account, according to pollster John Zogby,
up from just 11 percent in 2005.
On the presidential campaign trail, Democrats Sen. Barack
Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Republican Sen. John McCain
offered statements urging a focused U.S. environmental and
energy policy. "Our leaders in Washington have to put what's
right for our planet ahead of what's good for their friends
in the energy industry," Obama (ILL) said in a statement on
the day of the presidential primary in Pennsylvania while
his fellow rival Clinton (NY) had harsh words against Bush.
“I will end the Bush administration's assault on
environmental protections and standards.” McCain (AZ), who
openly disagrees with the Bush administration on the need
for capping carbon emissions, warned that the climate issue
would be one of the greatest challenges confronting the next
president. “We must have the courage to realistically
confront the specter of climate change,” he said.
While US is facing strict criticism due to carbon emissions
and hundreds of its new coal plants have been blocked by
state government or stuck in court challenges, Italy’s major
electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power
plant from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on
earth. The return now to coal even in eco-conscious Europe
is sowing real alarm among environmentalists who warn that
it is setting the world on a disastrous trajectory that will
make controlling global warming impossible. People from
different parts of the world including Americans, are
expecting a rapid action from the upcoming new US president
to adopt a goal of halving world emissions by 2050 and that
new technologies such as clean coal or new biofuels could
cut emissions in coming decades.
"President McCain, President Obama, or President Clinton
would all shift this country to a much higher level on
climate change," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, told
a meeting of 18 state leaders at Yale University on April
10, 2008. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said a deadlock
between the United States, by many counts the world's top
greenhouse gas emitter, and rapidly developing countries,
like China and India, on working together to cut emissions
would loosen if a new U.S. administration takes the lead on
climate change.
Although
major economies made progress in defining the building
blocks of a new U.N. deal to fight climate change on Friday,
April 18, 2008, but ended split over whether to set a goal
of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The UN
sponsored meeting in Paris, France, left deep divisions
about whether to set a goal of halving global emissions by
2050, favored by the European Union, Japan and Canada as
part of a fight against warming that may bring more floods,
droughts, heat waves, and rising seas.
Developing nations said they would not sign up to such a
goal at a planned summit of leaders of the 17 major
economies on next July 9 in Japan unless Washington did far
more to curb emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
According to data submitted to the United Nations, in 2006,
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell by 1.3 percent and EU
emissions by 0.3. The Bush administration has opposed
specific targets to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases
like carbon dioxide -- spewed by coal-fired power plants and
petroleum-fueled vehicles -- arguing that this would hurt
the U.S. economy.
Industrialized nations apart from the United States have
agreed to consider cuts in emissions of 25 to 40 percent
below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of a new U.N. climate
treaty to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol. World is now
starting to look to the presidential hopefuls Barack Obama,
Hillary Clinton, or John McCain who will take office in
January 2009.
To repair
U.S. relations with countries those have urged the United
States to do more on climate to cut planet-warming gases and
as well as to gift a green America to American Voters, the
new President may need to endorse effective climate-change
law to reduce emissions to avoid dangerous global warming,
to shift the United States to clean energy, and to minimize
the law's economic impacts on aid communities and
ecosystems.
