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But even as recently as January, with the Bush-Cheney team in and the Clinton-Gore team out, there was reason for environmentalists to hope. Whitman, who had built a respectable environmental record as New Jersey Governor, was a pleasant surprise as EPA chief, and Bush had sometimes belied expectations, besting the bright green Al Gore during the campaign with his call for mandatory caps on power-plant emissions. What's more, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill--former Alcoa chairman--turned out to be a Kyoto backer, drafting a memo for the new President arguing that the only problem with the pact was that it didn't go far enough.
On March 6, after her February meeting with European leaders, Whitman too wrote Bush a memo in which she argued that the U.S. had a credibility problem when it came to climate change. "The world community...are all convinced of the seriousness of this issue," she wrote. "It is also an issue that is resonating here, at home. We need to appear engaged."
Other interests--notably the oil and coal industries, both heavy contributors to Bush's campaign--also had the President's ear. Only a week after Bush received Whitman's memo, he wrote a letter of his own to four industry-friendly Republican Senators, announcing the reversal of his CO2 pledge and declaring his opposition to Kyoto. Whitman was sandbagged--forced to explain Bush's position and defend her credibility. "My job," she said, "is to provide the President with my best take. He needs to make a decision based on all the factors. I am fully comfortable with his decision."
Not everyone in Congress--including some Republicans--feels the same way. Three Republican Representatives had been planning to join with Democrats to introduce a bill in the House mandating precisely the CO2 power-plant caps Bush no longer wants. The gesture, however, is mostly symbolic. Even if the bill should pass the House, it could be torn apart in the ferociously partisan Senate. Whatever scraps of it that reached the President's desk would face a near certain veto.
Nonetheless the Administration continues to insist that the President will produce a coherent--if unspecified--global-warming policy soon. Environmentalists are fearing the worst. Before Bush's CO2 reversal, the White House created a so-called carbon rump group to reassess the U.S. position on emissions. An Administration official insists that the work the panel is doing is "a high-level, intense review," and while that may be true, it's also a fact that in-house study teams such as this are often simply places where orphan ideas are sent to die. More substantively, Vice President Cheney has been heading up an energy task force that is due to issue recommendations in May. Along with calling for increased oil exploration in Alaska and new oil and gas pipelines, the panel's recommendations may include research into cleaner ways to burn coal. Significantly, the team is also expected to suggest renewed construction of nuclear power plants, which put out no carbon but generate extremely radioactive waste.