The latest news from the White House:
The US will announce a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before next month’s UN climate summit, according to a White House official.
The target is expected to be in line with figures contained in legislation before the Senate — a reduction of about 17-20% from 2005 levels by 2020.
This is no big surprise: 17% is the figure in Waxman-Markey and it’s close to the figure in the various Senate bills. Overall, it’s a pretty modest target, but Obama could hardly pledge anything more under the circumstances. At least it’s something.
(I think this is going to be my motto for the next four years: “At least it’s something.” Kinda sad, isn’t it? But at the moment we’re still pretty plainly not willing to face up to reality on a whole bunch of different fronts. So we do what we can.)