Greenpeace said yesterday that US President Bush’s new climate strategy was not even too little, too late, but a dangerous sham.

“Bush is clearly running scared on the issue of climate change and of the huge public demand in the US and globally for urgent action,” said John Coequyt of Greenpeace USA.

“This is a slap in the face to one of the US’s key allies, Germany which has rightly made climate a central issue in the G8 this year and has put the emission cuts science demands into the draft G8 communique. The US talk of a “new policy” is also a desperate attempt to head off the start of international negotiations on the next stage of emissions reductions after 2012; it is a distraction from the real task of agreeing emission reductions.”

If Bush wants to act on climate change, the first thing he should do is to put his own country in order by setting a cap on carbon dioxide emissions and supporting a national renewable energy standard. Bush does not have to start a new initiative to agree targets with major emitters, he could simply agree to the targets proposed for the G8 meeting next week. If he does not do that, the other seven G8 members need to move forward without Bush.

A 50% cut in global emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels is what science demands and will require industrialized countries to cut their emissions by 30 percent by 2020 and 80-90 percent by 2050.

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