The Facts on Emissions, or a Lot of Hot Air?

President Bush made an arresting claim about global warming when he appeared at a fundraiser last Monday, but it may not have been correct.

“Do you realize that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that cut greenhouse gases last year?” Bush said in Bellevue, Wash.

Kristen A. Hellmer, the spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged afterward that the White House was unable to substantiate the claim.
“While it’s very likely to be the case that we are the only industrialized nation that cut absolute emissions, there is not directly comparable data because not all other nations take such a measurement,” she said by e-mail. “We are making sure the president is aware of that.”

The Department of Energy estimated in May that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declined 78 million metric tons, or 1.3 percent, between 2005 and 2006. That represents the first drop in emissions since 2001, when a slowdown in the economy and the Sept. 11 attacks affected the numbers.

How much the Bush administration influenced this is another question. The Energy Information Administration offered two major explanations for the decline: The first, a cooler summer and a warmer winter, had nothing to do with Bush. The other explanation was that cleaner power sources such as natural gas and non-fossil fuels are coming online in the electrical industry — another area where Bush’s pull seems at best minimal.

The Washington Post