Where to start? When does any history start?

Clean air and clean water, the wise use of our land, the protection of wildlife and natural beauty.

No, too early.

I want to call upon all of you to join me in enacting into law a new Clean Air Act this year.

I don't look here either. We came to Kyoto to find new ways to bridge our

differences. The imperative here is to do what we promise rather than to promise

what we cannot do.

Maybe.

We will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide,

nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time.

Let's start here. It's as good a place as any when you're trying to pick a starting

point for a cascade of falling dominoes. This was the largely forgotten moment in the 2000 presidential campaign that George W Bush said he would regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

You might think of Al Gore as the original global warming politician.

But in 2000, it actually seemed like it would be his rival,

George W Bush, who would enact the first meaningful regulations

of greenhouse gas emissions.

Because it was George Bush, not Al Gore in the 2000 election, was Bush who campaigned with the

promise that he'd regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the nation's power plants.

He said that in September of 2000.

He went to the left of Al Gore on the issue.

This is Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard specializing in environmental law.

When George W Bush won, he signaled to the world just how seriously he was going to take climate change.

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