Didn't anyone tell our President that carbon neutral was the 2006 Word of the Year?

While he finally mentioned the serious challenge of global climate change in his speech on Tuesday, "W" clearly (and consciously) avoided a lot of the terms those of us who regularly think/speak/write about global warming rely upon to get our point across.

The New York Times has a nifty search tool that analyzes the words used in all seven of Bush's State of the Union Addresses–check out these search results:

global warming - never used
carbon neutral - never used
renewable energy - never used
wind power - never used
geothermal energy - never used
carbon sequestration - never used
carbon offsets - never used
carbon emissions - never used
greenhouse gases - never used
climate neutral - never used

global climate change - used once (2007)
biodiesel - used once (2007)
alternative fuels - used twice (2007)
clean coal technologies - used twice (2005, 2007)
safe nuclear energy - used twice ( 2006-07)
ethanol - used four times (2005-07)

So, what do all these words add up to in terms of potential policy change? In an analysis of the speech in today's Washington Post, Samuel Thernstrom, a former Bush environmental aide, said:

To be perfectly frank, I thought it was an appalling disappointment for everyone, whether you're on the right or the left. We had all been led to expect . . . that we would hear a very substantial initiative from the president. Instead, Bush's plan is essentially trivial, it's marginal.

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