In a ceremony that would've been considered unthinkable a few years ago, President Bush signed a major energy bill Wednesday mandating increased fuel efficiency for new cars and trucks and taking other important steps to modernize the nation's energy policy. ...
The freshly minted energy bill is far from perfect. Lawmakers scuttled a worthwhile measure to impose $21 billion in taxes on oil and gas companies to help pay for the development of cleaner, renewable fuels and torpedoed a promising initiative requiring electric utilities to improve efficiency or use more wind and solar power.
But despite such flaws, the bill represents commendable progress along the road toward energy independence while foreshadowing how much farther our nation still must travel.
ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION, DEC. 20
Politics hampers Bali talks U.S. delegates at the conference to develop an international accord on climate change should not have been able to put this nation in a position to be shamed or railroaded into signing on to an effective plan.
Unfortunately, they were following national policy, so there was little they could do, except to reject efforts to write binding commitments into a plan to limit emissions from industry, transportation and agriculture. ...
The best thing to come out of this latest meeting was an agreement to keep trying. At least the Bali conference attempted to bring all the nations on board and to hold developing and industrialized nations accountable. ...
Given the evidence related to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide emissions, warming seas, deforestation, extinction of species and erratic weather, two more years of talk clearly are not solution enough. A pact to limit emissions is past due. Developing nations should be part of the solution. The U.S. and other industrialized nations should lead the way.
