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Bush admin. releases plan to fight global warming with technology

As part of its 2002 plan to fight global warming (what, you never heard about that one?), the Bush administration promised a technology-development plan. A mere four years later, it has arrived! To the surprise of absolutely no one, the "Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan" is largely a token gesture, a rounding up under one umbrella of existing subsidies to select industries, mainly nuclear, "clean coal," and ethanol, with targets that don't kick in until 2010. It promises $3 billion a year for various government tech programs, a mere 7 percent increase over money already appropriated for the purpose this year. The Bush climate plan -- which involves no mechanism to impose a cost on carbon dioxide emissions -- has been embraced by big-biz trade groups and panned by most everyone else. Just last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report saying that increasing the cost of carbon emissions is a crucial component of a cost-effective climate-change strategy. So much for that.

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