The President and his dog Barney going out to play ball. Photo courtesy of the White House.

President Bush announced new goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases from the beautiful Rose Garden on Wednesday.

The President proposed a halt in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2025, which basically means that emissions will be allowed to increase for almost the next two decades. After 2025 the emissions will decrease, as long as technology continues to advance.

President Bush would commit to a binding international agreement on long-term reductions as long as countries such as China do the same, but this pretty much nothing new from what the White House has been saying in the past.

Some of the key exerpts from the President's speech on Wednesday........

In 2002, I announced our first step: to reduce America's greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent through 2012. I'm pleased to say that we remain on track to meet this goal even as our economy has grown 17 percent.

We will pursue an economy-wide strategy that builds on the solid foundation that we have in place. As part of this strategy, we worked with Congress to pass energy legislation that specifies a new fuel economy standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, and requires fuel producers to supply at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022. (This is old news)

In 2009 alone, the government and the private sector plan to dedicate nearly a billion dollars to clean coal research and development.

We must all recognize that in the long run, new technologies are the key to addressing climate change. But in the short run, they can be more expensive. And that is why I believe part of any solution means reforming today's complicated mix of incentives to make the commercialization and use of new, lower emission technologies more competitive.

We would love hear your opinion on the major points of Bush's speech. Has Bush now gone too far with his proposals? Or not far enough?

You can read the entire speech right here or you can check out the White House fact sheet, which highlights the key points of the speech.