By Darren Samuelsohn | POLITICO
Environmentalists won’t want to hear this, but the best hope for saving the planet may be another president named Bush.
Jeb Bush built solid green credentials during two terms as Florida’s governor, spearheading a $1 billion public land acquisition program, Everglades restoration and water quality. Of late, he’s using his credentials as a fiscal conservative to challenge his party’s “anti-science” wing.
He’s no Al Gore, but Bush’s recent book tour — which continues Wednesday with a speech to the World Affairs Council in Dallas — has included an emphasis on energy that goes where few other Republican leaders have been willing to go: arguing the country’s natural gas boom can curb greenhouse gas emissions.
As Bush begins to position himself for a presidential run in 2016, former aides and even some greens admit he could be positioned to achieve global warming’s equivalent of a “Nixon to China” moment, especially if he had to work with a Democrat-led Congress.
