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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (132148)	3/15/2001 11:59:43 PM
From: RON BL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Analysis: Leftists Urge Economy-Crippling 'Global Warming' Policy Wes Vernon Friday, March 16, 2001 Left-wing lawmakers are attempting a "Don’t hit my fist with your face" spin on President Bush’s policy on so-called global warming. "President Bush has gone from CO2 to See you later," declares Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. "In this case, turnabout is foul play," agrees Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. "A breathtaking betrayal," cries Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. "Moderate" Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert claims to be "profoundly disappointed." In fact, Bush’s letter on the subject, reported by NewsMax.com on Tuesday, made it clear that his policy will follow his campaign statements. During a debate with Al Gore, Bush said that while the prospect of global warming should be monitored, the Kyoto treaty, signed by President Bill Clinton but never formally submitted to the Senate - which unanimously went on record against it - was flawed and would not work. The Dow this week plunged below 10,000. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was testifying before the Senate Thursday that the California energy crisis very well may go from bad to worse this summer, complete with "rolling blackouts." And in face of these simultaneous economic and energy problems, which of course, can feed on each other, "liberals" are criticizing the president for not following a policy that would exacerbate both. This gives the American people a clear picture of how a Gore-Lieberman administration would have dealt with the worsening economy: Sacrifice a sound solution on the altar of environmental extremism. The catalyst for the outrage is the letter the president wrote to several senators who had been getting confusing signals from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman. She had said "the science is good" on the theory of global warming. The president, in his letter, made it clear he believes the science is not good at all on the theory. The Kyoto Protocol, he said, "would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy" and "is an unfair and ineffective means of addressing global climate change concerns." That treaty calls on the top industrial nations to make drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. This part of the president’s letter is key: "I intend to work with the congress on a multipollutant strategy to require power plants to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. Any such strategy would include phasing in reductions over a reasonable period of time, providing regulatory certainty, and offering market-based incentives to help industry meet the targets. I do not believe however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions on carbon dioxide which is not a 'pollutant' under the Clean Air Act." It is this seemingly common-sense approach that has led congressional left-wingers and their environmental extremist allies to cry "Betrayal!" American Enterprise Institute resident fellow James K. Glassman, in a Wall Street Journal article March 9, noted that Al Gore loved calling carbon dioxide a pollutant, even though "not even the Clinton Administration had the nerve to push it this way." Then Glassman added sardonically, "I’m assuming that the carbon dioxide expelled from the lungs of humans in the process of breathing would be excluded" from Gore’s version of a "multipollutant strategy." As usual, the leftist outrage is helped along by the cheering section of the mainstream media. The New York Daily News calls the Bush statement "a turnabout" that "cut the legs out from under Christie Whitman, Bush’s Environmental Protection Administrator." In point of fact, as reported by NewsMax.com in past articles on Whitman, it was the EPA administrator who "cut the legs out from under" the president. That is where the irony of the "hit my fist with your face" outrage enters the picture. As we previously reported, a conservative lawmaker told us that Whitman now realizes that she was mistaken on Bush's policy and that she would "moderate" her comments on global warming. Thus, the president’s letter Tuesday came as no surprise to us. Our informant did not say whether Whitman had been "taken to the woodshed" on this policy matter. We have also cited Aaron Waldavsky, the late political science professor at the University of California who said that "withdrawing carbon from production and consumption is capable of realizing the environmentalist’s dream of an egalitarian society based on the rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population’s eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and consuming a much lower level of resources much more equally." If that scenario sounds eerily familiar, critics of the theory of "global warming” note that there was at one time a country that did end up with that result. That country, the Soviet Union, passed into oblivion after 75 years. It is controversies such as this that cause columnists (most recently Ann Coulter) to discuss in print the question of whether liberals are evil or merely stupid.