Speaking from the Rose Garden, President Bush delivered a lot of talk of curbing greenhouse emissions. After suffering from severe drought, Australia embraced the Kyoto Protocol, making the US the only nation that has not. Instead of setting an example through bold action, Bush urged other leaders to do what he has not. Per the New York Times' Andrew C. Revkin:
President Bush, in a Rose Garden speech on climate change, challenged the world’s biggest (and most polluting) countries to immediately end trade barriers on energy-related technology, beef up a fund to help bring less-polluting energy options to poor countries, and commit to curbing their greenhouse-gas emissions.
President Bush set the less than modest target date of 2025 to end the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, but again, he offered no bold government initiative, such as a tax or caps on carbon emissions, to solve the problem.
Mr. Bush rejected the approaches pursued by Congress so far, most of which have focused on mandatory limits on emissions. Instead, he described a set of incentives that, he said, would spur the energy transition that needs to take place (along with ending fights over nuclear power and other energy infrastructure).
He was immediately criticized on various fronts by environmentalists, some scientists, and political opponents, who said he was simply recasting existing economic and technological trends as change, that he was trying to derail congressional initiatives (promoted mainly by Democrats and a small cluster of moderate Republicans), and that he was continuing an eight-year pattern of delay in attacking the creeping, but momentous, climate problem.
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