Content of State of the Union speech remains a mystery — kind of
Will President Bush crack down on climate change in his State of the Union address? The world may never know — until, of course, he gives the speech next Tuesday. Mutterings that the administration would embrace a cap-and-trade carbon-reduction scheme were flatly denied by White House spokesflack Tony Snow this week: “If you’re talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nationwide, we knocked that down. That’s not something we’re talking about.” Bush’s stubbornness is unpopular with, um, nearly everyone. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and German Chancellor Angela “Backrub” Merkel — not to mention some of Bush’s top advisers — have all urged the president to get with the cap-and-trade times. Sources familiar with the speech suggest that, instead, Bush will focus on ethanol and recycling — recycling the tired old “technology will save us” line, that is.
