Editorial: Impasse on climate change

Wednesday, May 2, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

Earlier this week President Bush and the leader of the European Union agreed that climate change is a problem. But they could not agree how to best address the problem.

In discussions that more often seem to change in venue rather than substance, Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, head of the EU, met on Monday in Washington where, according to Bush, the two leaders recognized that the world faces "a problem with greenhouse gases," Reuters news service reports. Merkel added that the meeting allowed Bush and the EU to "find a lot of common ground."

But other than stating the obvious, the United States and the EU emerged from the meeting without taking meaningful steps toward reconciling their differences. The EU regulates, and seeks to lower, greenhouse gas emissions. Bush, on the other hand, balks at regulation and focuses on developing new energy sources - some clean, and some not so clean.

Merkel says global climate change is to be discussed in June by the leaders of eight industrialized nations and the developing countries of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. But it seems unlikely that such nations as China and India, whose uses of fossil fuels are increasing, will seriously consider regulating emissions when Bush - the leader of the world's richest nation - stubbornly holds fast to the notion that penalizing polluters stifles economic growth. The EU dismisses that idea for the myth that it is.

And while Bush is assuring the EU that he is serious about confronting global climate change, he remains relentless in his pursuit of new fossil fuel sources.

On Monday the president also proposed to issue new oil and natural gas drilling leases for tens of millions of acres of environmentally sensitive areas off the coasts of Alaska and Virginia.

Interior Department officials estimate the projects could, over the next 40 years, produce 16 months' worth of oil and two years' worth of natural gas at current U.S. consumption levels. That is hardly worth the effort of dragging out the drilling equipment.

But Bush's energy appetite is seemingly insatiable. That attitude is not going to result in a reduction in emissions or consumption, no matter what Bush is telling European leaders.