The World Leader in Carbon Sequestration
In response to a NY Times editorial that highlighted the President's "passive approach" to global warming, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman decided to set the record straight:
To the Editor:
Re "Climate Signals" (editorial, May 19), about President Bush and global climate change:
Under the president's direction, our government has taken a global leadership role in developing technologies to reduce emissions. America has the largest carbon sequestration program in the world, and in 2003 we founded the international Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum.
Wow, that's quite a claim to fame. However, carbon sequestration doesn't, strictly speaking, reduce emissions. It reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But if the rate of increase in emissions outperforms our noble efforts in carbon sequestration, we still have a problem.
By the way, I can just see Sascha Cohen's Borat objecting that, no, as a matter of fact, Kazakhstan has the world's best carbon sequestration program.
We are working to develop zero-emission power plants through the $1 billion FutureGen program; we are investing $2 billion in "clean coal" technologies; we are working to create incentives for the construction of more clean, safe and reliable nuclear power plants; and the United States has tripled wind power generation since 2000.
The last sentence reminds me of the "record home ownership" line.
The comments made by Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, regarding G.E.'s investment in environmentally friendly technologies are further proof that the free-market approach advocated by the president works. If given the opportunity, companies will invest in such technologies because, as Mr. Immelt says, "green is green."
The president's opponents have called him a lot of things, but "passive" with regard to climate change is certainly not accurate.
Yes, we must really correct this distorting name-calling. No one in his right mind would label the President passive with regard to global warming.
By the way, doesn't it say it all that the Energy Secretary was the cabinet member who responded to an editorial on global warming?
2:49:16 PM 
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