Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Rebuked on Global Warming
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 10:42:02 -0500 (EST)
Rebuked on Global Warming
March 1, 2003
Nothing so far has shamed President Bush into adopting a
more aggressive policy toward the threat of global warming.
He has been denounced by mainstream scientists, deserted by
his progressive friends in industry and sued by seven
states. Still he clings stubbornly to a voluntary policy
aimed at merely slowing the growth of greenhouse gas
emissions, despite an overwhelming body of evidence that
only binding targets and a firm timetable will do the job.
Now there is fresh criticism from sources Mr. Bush may
find harder to ignore. Last week Prime Minister Tony Blair
of Britain, Mr. Bush's most loyal ally in the debate over
Iraq, gently but firmly rebuked the president for
abandoning the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global climate change
and for succumbing to the insupportable notion that
fighting global warming will impede economic growth.
That was followed by another salvo, from an expert panel
assembled by the National Academy of Sciences to assess Mr.
Bush's proposals for further research into climate change.
Though polite, the panel could hardly have been more
contemptuous. It described Mr. Bush's plan as a redundant
examination of issues that had largely been settled, bereft
of vision, executable goals and timetables - in short,
little more than a cover-up for inaction.
Of the two rebukes, Mr. Blair's may have been the more
painful. The prime minister said he regarded environmental
degradation in general and climate change in particular as
"just as devastating in their potential impact" as weapons
of mass destruction and terrorism. "There will be no
genuine security," he said, "if the planet is ravaged." He
also pledged to cut Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by
60 percent by midcentury, a longer-range but still a far
more ambitious timetable than Kyoto's target of an average
5 percent reduction by industrialized nations by 2012.
Mr. Blair's speech obviously served the political purpose
of distancing himself from the White House, at least on
this issue, at a time when many of his countrymen have
criticized him for his support of Mr. Bush on Iraq. It
should also be noted that, in strictly economic terms, it
is easier for Mr. Blair to hold the high ground on this
issue than it is for Mr. Bush. Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher's wrenching decision some years ago to convert
Britain's energy base from coal to natural gas, a much
cleaner fuel, has already moved Britain closer to Mr.
Blair's lofty targets than it otherwise would have been.
Nevertheless, the prime minister's approach is everything
Mr. Bush's is not. It conveys a sense of urgency, calls for
common sacrifice and offers a coherent vision of how to get
from here to there. It is, in short, a recipe for the
leadership that until not too long ago the world had been
looking to America to provide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/opinion/01SAT1.html?ex=1047533322&ei=1&en=8185aa6a210ce466