Press Briefing by Dana Perino

Business Wire, April 14, 2008

But that technology is advancing, and the President was able to go to a Dole plant where they were showing how to -- I'm sorry, I'm not sure if it was Dole, excuse me. I can't remember the name of the plant, but I remember going to the event, and looking at how the scientists were approaching this issue with gusto, with a lot of money behind them, because there is going to be demand for alternative fuels, because we realize that we have two problems: one, we are too dependent on foreign sources of energy; and two, we have environmental concerns that we want to address.

Matt.

Q Yes, what does the President think of Jimmy Carter's planned meeting with Hamas during his Middle East trip? And is there any concern at the White House that Israel has so far declined to provide any kind of assistance to the Secret Service agents who are guarding Carter?

MS. PERINO: I hadn't heard about the second part regarding Secret Service agents. The President believes that if President Carter wants to go, that he is doing so in his own private capacity as a private citizen. He is not representing the United States in those meetings, and the President is not a supporter of having conversations with Hamas. And we have made that known.

Q Does he see -- does the President see this in any way undermining his own efforts to isolate Hamas?

MS. PERINO: I think Hamas has done a good enough job of isolating itself. We don't think that it's helpful, no.

Roger.

Q Yes, back to global warming. Cap and trade has come up frequently during these conversations over the past year or more. Is it the administration's position still that it is opposed to cap and trade?

MS. PERINO: Well, we -- remember, when it comes to market-oriented policies, we have been a supporter of those types of policies. And for example, the first cap and trade policy in America was called the Acid Rain Trading Program, whereby we have been able to drastically reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air. Using that program, we added nitrogen oxide and mercury through the Clear Skies rule program; we've tried to do it through legislation, and Congress decided not to move on it. So we were able to strip out those pollutants, mostly because the technology existed to establish that cap and trade proposal.

We aren't necessarily against cap and trade proposals.

Q I'm sorry --

MS. PERINO: We are not necessarily against cap and trade proposals. As I just said, the President proposed and implemented one when it came to pollutants, like NOx and mercury, added on to the back of the sulfur rain -- I'm sorry, sulfur dioxide program that had been put in place in the late 1990s, because that program has worked very well. But cap and trade programs can be very complicated. And what we have seen so far from Congress is not something that we could support.

Q All right. And a follow-up to that. Is there any -- sort of following up on Ken's question, is there a package that you're developing that's primarily legislation, or is it more regulatory in whatever it is that you --