Sigh.

The US has actually cut CO emissions. Not much, 2 or 3 %.

China and India continue to blech CO like a, like a - well, like a cow.

FWIW, I thought water vapor was a far more damaging greenhouse gas than CO - did I miss something? (lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html )

SO - shower with a friend to save the planet....'eh?

Lets talk with our money. We can invest our way out of this!

The problem is not USA, but its the other countries who are not even moving in this direction. All the greenies want is for everyone to do it all at once. What happen to step by step, I like to see someone jump straight in and get everything right and not ending up living like some dude from the 70s. Yes get rid of everything we knew or shrink everything we have. Why can't the USA follow other countries on emission, well some of them have a head start, a couple of years or so. Most of them are moving the wrong way and everyone else follows too. Look at Biofuel, the only countries that can really handle it is the USA and not those third world countries. Lets all jump in the same way around the world.
We appreciate the pressure of moving towards the good and green stuff but lets do it responsibly.
I want a Tesla motor car too, I am happy to swap my Toyota($7,000) for it. Anyone? C'mon be nice and think green. Help me out here. You can save the world by helping me. LOL

White House Plan for Climate change.

"lets ignore it and make money on oil ...
We keep the Clinton initiatives voluntary and don't expect anyone to follow this greenwash except a greenies. "

"ok Bos Bush, that will get the climate changed faster."

Don...yeah, you missed something...water vapor is a powerful, plentiful greenhouse gas, but not at all "dangerous." I'ts self limiting. More water vapor, more rain. That doesn't happen with CO2...DB

Ray the money man, give me the money to invest and I'll definitely be there with you =\

BB, the problem IS the USA along with other huge industrial countries like China. Americans have always been the leaders (philosophically) of a better future, so why should this situation be any different? As far as biofuels you're wrong. With Cellulose ethanol, every country that has agriculture can create biofuels.

What's going on right now is a good start, but we need more legislature at the state and local levels in order to push this progression. As a society, from the moment you are born everything is about money, so it's not suprising that a company full of greedy businessmen would NOT want to lower their profits just to show they care. If we found ways to save those companies money and improve their profits, they'd JUMP at the chance.

Elaborating on Dan's comment.

Imbalances of H2O precipitate out on average by the 7th day. Or half of the imbalance will be gone on the seventh day, seven days later, half again of the original imbalance will be gone. In order for the imbalance to persist longer, some other forcings must remain in effect.

Forcings such as changes in solar illumination, continental drift and consequent ocean & wind current changes, changes in orbit and planetary orientation...and increases in the more permanent greenhouse gasses.

Such as CO2, whose imbalances take at least decades to go away. Real imbalances in CO2 take longer to go away as greenhouse gasses create feedback loops which helps create more greenhouse gasses.

Let's get this straight: Voluntary Pollution-Reduction Programs, as they have been marketed, are a hoax, a scam, a play of smoke and mirrors by an administration more concerned about its relations with special interest than its own people.

This government's loathsome agenda is an insult to every American and will come with a heavy price that future generations will have to pay.

Expecting companies to do the right thing shows a tremendous lack of understanding of how bottom-line companies work -- i.e. sociopathic. The idea that a company would willfully diminish their profits to better some social goal is completely ridiculous. Many of us cringed when Bush originally put this idea out there. It's no surprise that it didn't work. The only thing that this does show is how foolish some people can be when they champion the private sector as the savior of us all.

The Bush administration is no stranger to this concept. They knew it wouldn't make any difference. They knew that it was card blanche to companies to pollute. They knew the companies would return their increased profits to the republican party in the form of campaign donations and all that. And they knew that the talking heads would convince their hoards of zombies that this was a smart move and that the private sector will save us all.

The only way this voluntary program would work is if we internalized these externalities. If pollution showed up in the bottom-line of corporations, they sure would do a cost benefit analysis and find that putting increased efficiencies and pollution-control schemes into place would offset the cost of polluting.

Bush had this policy as Governor of Texas. It was bad then, and I knew it would be bad for the nation. I grew up in a petro-chemical corridor in Texas. Since I moved away, the pollution is worse, but the money is flowing. I appreciate TreeHugger following up on this national policy. I wonder if they could do a compare and contrast with how the policy played out in Texas, and how it played out nationwide (profits vs health consequences). I know the University of Texas did a study recently that children who grew up within 2 miles of the Houston Ship Channel were more likely to have cancer than the general population.
I know TreeHugger likes to focus on CO2 emissions, but plain old air pollution is important too, and, IMHO, a more immediate problem that could be addressed, and would also provide a step in the right direction for CO2 reductions, as well.

http://www.uthouston.edu/Media/newsreleases/nr2007/sph-shipchannel.html