The administration of George W. Bush seems to have discovered a new interest in the issue of climate change, starting just before the G8 summit last summer in Germany. Common wisdom holds that this interest is either shallow or, more cynically, an effort to derail ongoing international negotiations via distraction. But when President Bush proposed that a new international framework for climate change be developed by the end of 2008, his last year in office, he had no trouble getting other world leaders to agree enthusiastically, and a first meeting is scheduled for this week in Washington. [...]

A 2005 paper in Presidential Studies Quarterly by William Howell and Kenneth Mayer finds that “having lost in November, presidents usher through the regulatory process roughly 25 percent more rules and directives during the final three months of their terms.” The effect is much larger when the White House changes hands from one political party to another.

There is little doubt that the Bush Administration felt the political sting of not only the proposed mercury regulation but other last-minute actions by the Clinton Administration as well, such as those on arsenic and the International Criminal Court.

So if a Democrat is elected in November 2008, which appears likely, it seems eminently plausible that the Bush Administration would help the new administration get off to a running start by leaving them with a proposed rule, under the EPA, for the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. Even the possibility of such a late-hour action is probably enough for the declared Democratic presidential candidates to be very careful about calling for dramatic action on climate change, lest – if elected – they find themselves getting what they asked for.

Because no one really yet knows how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by any significant amount, a strong proposed rule on climate change issued in the final months of the Bush Administration would create all sorts of political difficulties for the next president, just as those late-hour rules proposed by President Clinton did for President Bush. If reducing emissions indeed proves to be easy, as some have suggested, President Bush would get credit for taking decisive action. If it proves difficult and costly, as many suggest, then the next administration would bear the political backlash.

Common wisdom that the Bush Administration will not act meaningfully on climate change may in the end prove to be correct. But, at the same time, remember that lame ducks are unpredictable creatures.
http://www.ostina.org/content/view/2558/794/