IndiaPost.com - Nuclear energy ‘best’ to reduce greenhouse gases: Bush

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush has strongly pitched for nuclear power to meet growing energy needs, saying it is the "best solution" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "If you’re truly serious about dealing with greenhouse gases, then it seems like to me you ought to be a strong supporter of nuclear power.

Nuclear power enables us to generate electricity without emitting one unit of greenhouse gases" Bush told a White House press conference. "I am amazed that our country isn’t more robust in supporting the advent of nuclear power — I certainly am — and applaud those efforts by members of the Congress to provide incentives for the construction of new plants," he said. Bush said nuclear energy is the best solution for economic growth and to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions.

"But if you’re somebody who says greenhouse gases are of vital national interest, then you ought to be saying: I’m for the development of nuclear power plants.

It is by far the best solution to making sure we have economic growth and, at the same time, be good stewards of the environment" Bush said. Bush said his administration was working on climate issues from several fronts. "We do have a strategy.

Our strategy is to bring others to the table. Our strategy is to develop our own plan to meet the national goals — the international goals that I hope we’ll be able to set later on this summer, and you just heard some of the components of it," Bush said. He said countries that emit greenhouse gases must sit together to find a solution to the problem. "In order to be effective on a global basis, countries that emit greenhouse gases need to be at the table. You know, one of the main reasons I was against Kyoto was that China wasn’t at the table.

We could do all we wanted to do, but it wouldn’t affect greenhouse gases over the long run, unless a country like China had agreed to participate. "And so we went to the Bali conference with that in mind, and worked out a compromise that said we’re committed to a process that’s going to unfold over the next two years, but we’ve also got a parallel process working to make sure major emitters sit at the table and come together, hopefully on a goal that we all agree to," Bush said in response to a query.

"And it’s a strategy that I laid out at the G-8 in Germany, it’s a strategy that was explained to everybody there in Bali and it’s a strategy we think will be effective," he said. Bush said care should taken to ensure that measures to tackle climate change do not impact the economy.