It's not anything to write home about. The only way to solve the problem is to actually cut the greenhouse gases we're putting into the air, not increase it less quickly.

I can't remember where I saw this, but somebody had a good article on this very subject, and she drew an analogy with someone who had a weight problem. He goes to his doctor one day and he weighs 225 pounds. He goes back six months later and he weighs 250 pounds; that's an 11% increase. He goes back six months after that, and he weighs 275 pounds. That's only a 10% increase! We've slowed the rate of gaining weight!

But the guy's still a fattie, isn't he? And there's another little tidbit buried in that math. Note that both the first 11% increase and the second 10% increase represent the same actual amount of weight: 25 pounds in each case. Add a certain amount to a big number and it represents a smaller percent increase than adding the same amount to a smaller number. Which is one reason why using "percent of increase" in greenhouse gases is inherently deceptive.

And I would also say that this explains why the U.S. emissions have increased less, measured in this deceptive way, than other countries'. We were emitting much more to start with, and therefore the increase we had represents a smaller percentage of this larger whole than that of another country that started with less.

It is simply inconceivable that the U.S. be doing better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, either as a total or as a function of size of economy, than, say, France, when the U.S. has very poor public transportation and most people drive everywhere they go, and we get a lot of our electricity from coal plants, while France has excellent public transportation and people tend to drive less, and most of their electricity comes from nuclear (which for all its faults doesn't contribute to global warming at all). But it is conceivable that we're doing better in terms of "rate of increase" -- and that is yet another illustration of why this measure is deceptive.

The problem with any nation's "rate of increase" in greenhouse emissions isn't that it is bigger or smaller than another's, but that it is positive instead of negative. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply -- not merely slow down the speed with which we're increasing them.

Here's one reference from 2002:

Bush Disses Global Warming Report, Dismisses His Own Environmental Protection Agency's Findings - CBS News

So yes, this statement by Paul Volker does a 180 on the president's previous position, in that it acknowledges the reality of anthropogenic global warming. It still amounts to stalling, though.