Twenty three years ago, on this day, September 29, 2000, George Bush, trying to shore up his vote among Republicans who cared about conserving a habitable planet (they did exist, back then), makes a promise that he wouldn’t keep.
“We will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Bush was in a tight race with Al Gore. Ralph Nader was taking votes maybe more from Gore than him, but Bush needed to make the right noises so that centrist Republicans and independents who cared about climate might consider voting for him. Bush’s daddy had, in 1988, made similar “I will act on the greenhouse effect” promises and then done fuck all.
What I think we can learn from this as per Nick Tomalin, “they lie they lie they lie,” especially at elections.
What happened next
When de facto president Cheney took office he shat all over this fantasised about building new power stations and pulled the US out of the Kyoto negotiations
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.