The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert says California's effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions "may well be the most important piece of legislation passed this year; certainly it is the most far-sighted." Actually, she uses the mandate - still to be signed by the governor - as a way of dumping on President Bush's energy policy.

Six years ago, when George W. Bush was running for President, he called global warming a serious problem, and pledged, if elected, to regulate CO2 emissions. Practically his first move after taking office was to break that pledge. In the years since, his only actions on climate change have been to block, blunt, and subvert the well-meaning efforts of others.

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If you examine Bush’s record, you find that the technologies he supports are either those which were developed in the past—coal mining and oil drilling—or those which lie securely in the future: cars and buses that zip around on hydrogen. When presented with new technologies that could actually change the way Americans live in the here and now, the White House wants nothing to do with them.