President Bush held a press conference today in the Rose Garden of the White House after giving remarks about the upcoming G-8 conference. He was asked what he realistically expected to accomplish at the G-8 in order to deal with, among other things, soaring oil prices. Besides advocating that we increase drilling here at home, Bush offered this less than reassuring answer: "It took us a while to get into the energy situation we're in, it's gonna take us a while to get out of it."
[WATCH]
From AP:
As the holiday weekend began, Bush said Congress was in part to blame for rising gas prices that have stung American consumers.
He said lawmakers continue to block his proposals, including lifting prohibitions on offshore oil drilling. The president has also called for allowing oil drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity, and lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
Bush even appealed to Americans to lobby their congressional representatives on the matter.
"We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways and they ought to be writing their Congress people about it," Bush said.
Bush outlined his goals for his last G-8 summit of nations, which are the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.
The debate about what to do about global warming will be front and center in Hokkaido too, although the discussion will be on the sidelines of the actual summit. Bush is hosting a meeting of major economies to urge nations to embrace long-term commitments to reduce green house gas emissions, but he appeared to be lowering expectations.
Read more about the press conference here.