Gore "Troubled" By Bush's Environmental Proposals
The former Vice President responds to the President's global warming plan in an e-mail communique.


— Former Vice President Al Gore, after delivering a carefully worded speech that did or didn't — depending on your point of view — criticize President Bush's foreign policy a few nights ago, outright blasted the energy and conservation proposals Bush rolled out today.

Even so, in keeping with his gradual reemergence on the national political stage, Gore's attack came in the form of an e-mail to reporters, not in a public appearance or media interview (which he's still declining to do).
"Instead of accepting an accord endorsed by over 170 nations, President Bush has put forward a plan that falls far short of the needs of both America and the world. He has tried this type of approach before — in Texas — and it failed," Gore wrote in the e-mail.

Gore echoed the president's concern about the country's reliance on foreign sources of oil, but said the Bush Administration's energy plan would do little to help.

"A strong policy on climate change would lessen that dangerous dependence and move us to a clean and safe energy future," Gore said. "By contrast, this policy, like the administration plans to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, keep us tied to the dangerous global oil politics that pose a grave threat to our national well-being."

Two other potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2004, Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., criticized Bush's proposals this afternoon, Kerry in a brief press conference and Lieberman through a written statement.

Gore did not respond to any specific planks of the Bush plan, preferring instead to try to tap into the business-friendly type of approach many conservatives, Bush included, tend to support.

"A strong plan of action on climate change would stimulate the develop.m.ent of new transportation, power and manufacturing technologies and enable American companies to lead the world in capturing markets for those technologies. A weak policy like the one announced today, without binding requirements for greenhouse gas pollution reductions, makes it vastly harder for American companies to compete."

Gore has spent his political career developing legislative expertise on environmental issues. He wrote a book, "Earth in the Balance," which called for a reformulation of the way humans relate to nature. During his 2000 presidential campaign, candidate Gore tried to tar then-Governor Bush with negative independent studies on the state of the Texas environment and air quality.