President Bush’s lukewarm history on climate change came to the forefront this week with the last world conference being held before the Kyoto Protocols take effect in February. At the conference in Buenos Aires, the U.S. defended its position on global warming, making it the biggest industrialized nation in the world not to join the protocols.
The protocols, negotiated in 1999, are only coming into effect now because the pact could only come into force until enough nations joined. Russia agreed to join in October of this year. The treaty commits nations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to below 1990 levels, and creates a market for violators to buy “pollution credits” from countries that have exceeded their goals.
President Bush, meanwhile, still refuses even to consider carbon dioxide a pollutant, putting its emissions outside the regulatory control of the federal government. He canceled U.S. participation in the Kyoto protocols upon taking office, citing a lack of scientific evidence.
But since then the president’s own administration has found that global warming is caused by humans, and that it is a reality. Despite this, the Bush administration goes before the world and argues for the status quo.
In reality the Kyoto Protocols are only a first step. While it seeks to reduce CO2 emissions to pre-1990 levels, even those emissions are enough to raise sea levels and effect other climate change over the next century.
The summer blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow” was a work of science fiction, but it was based on the very real premise that melting polar ice caps will slow or eliminate the Gulf Stream current that gives northern areas its temperate climate. And a recent report found that the arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
Presidents have the power to demand action on issues of deep moral concern. The president demonstrated this when he invaded Iraq – rightly or wrongly – and President Reagan in the 1980s showed great courage in issuing a simple demand to the Soviet Union: “Tear down this wall.”
Unfortunately, the wall of ignorance between President Bush and the scientific reality of global warming shows no sign of being swayed.