From the British paper, The Independent:
A cynical man, a catastrophic error
30 March 2001
History will not judge George
Bush kindly. It is hard to
exaggerate the significance of
his repudiation of the Kyoto
treaty. It is not simply that the
US President thinks his nation
cannot meet the solemn
commitments on global
warming which it signed
three-and-a-half years ago. It is
that he does not care.
Of the many potential conflicts
between the US and its
partners on trade, defence and
foreign policy, nothing is as bad as this. It is not even
isolationism, it is in-your-face truculence.
The token gesture Mr Bush made during the election
campaign towards some kind of reduction in America's
carbon dioxide emissions turns out to have been a
cynical ploy to match Al Gore's green credentials.
Now Mr Bush is revealed as a fully fledged sceptic
about the science of global warming, saying he is
"unequivocal" in opposing the Kyoto agreement. In this
he sets himself, as firmly as any Creationist or
Flat-Earther, against the overwhelming scientific
consensus.
At the start of this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reported on its latest review of the
evidence. The IPCC is no pressure group. It is a
cautious and dispassionate body of scientists. Its
findings were ? in a word ? "unequivocal": the world's
climate is definitely warming, and burning of fossil fuels
is almost definitely responsible.
Of course, there is more uncertainty about the effects.
But even the best-case predictions are catastrophic by
the end of this century. And one does not need to be a
scientist to understand that if what can be predicted is
bad, the unpredictable effects of disturbing the planet's
life-support system could be so much worse. Even the
most pig-headed and blinkered politician in the pocket
of the US oil companies would want to minimise the risk
to future generations by prudently attempting to restrain
the appetite of the energy-hungriest nation in the world.
Not Mr Bush. The supposed "leadership of the free
world" is in the hands of a man determined to visit
greater misery on the generations to come.
independent.co.uk |
