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Silencing
science: U.S. seeks to purge report on warming
A Register-Guard Editorial, January 24, 2005
Once again the
Bush administration is trying to
impose its "What, me worry?" attitude toward climate
change on the rest of the world.
Last November, Bush administration officials squelched an effort by Arctic
nations to endorse mandatory carbon controls to counter global warming.
Now, the administration is trying to purge a United Nations action plan of
all references to climate change as a potential cause of future natural
calamities.
For the Bush administration, global warming has become a matter of
political will over flashing red-light reality. Driven by a toxic blend of
denial, subservience to industry and ideological distrust of apolitical,
fact-based science, Bush already is signaling that he intends to spend the
next four years dragging his feet on this most critical of issues.
If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the same way the president
spent his first term. During his 2000 campaign, Bush pledged regulatory
controls on carbon dioxide emissions. After the election, he flip-flopped,
rejecting the Kyoto Protocol approach to climate change. Even in the face
of administration's own scientific reports blaming carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases for global warming, the Bush White House continued
to insist the evidence was inconclusive and did not warrant action.
Last year, the
White House shifted its strategy. The U.S. secretaries of commerce and
energy and the president's own science adviser signed a report to Congress
acknowledging that warming trends cannot be attributed solely to natural
factors and that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases play a
significant role. But the report also insisted there was no solid evidence
supporting the need for
regulatory action.
The White House put this delaying strategy to work last November, when it
successfully lobbied members of the Arctic Council - a group of eight
nations, including the United States, that have Arctic territories - to
kill an aggressive policy statement calling for mandatory limits on carbon
dioxide emissions.
Last week, the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Disaster
Reduction lobbied for the deletion of all references to climate change
from a new U.N. action plan on natural disasters. It did so despite the
recent conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a
U.N.-organized network of scientists, that global warming will cause more
extreme weather events, including hurricanes and droughts, in the decades
to come.
Meanwhile, the
administration is doing its best to impose its political will on the
scientific community at home.
According to The
Washington Post, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, accused a senior administration official of trying to block him
from discussing the dangerous effects of global warning. And Bush's top
science adviser, John Marburger, has warned researchers that they risk
losing their federal funding if they publicly oppose administration
policies.
As the administration tries to force scientists to bend to its political
will, the buildup of climate-changing gases continues, with the United
States spewing an astonishing one third of the world's total. Scientists
warn that Arctic sea ice is melting at an alarming rate and that it could
be reduced by one-half as soon as the end of this century, causing severe
disruptions that range from the extinction of animal and plant species to
flooding in coastal regions across the globe.
The Bush
administration should stop denying the severity of global warming and
forcing scientists to bend to its political perspective. It should
acknowledge the weight of evidence supporting a conclusion that global
warming is a reality - one that will be the most pressing environmental
issue for decades to come and one that will affect the lives of everyone
on Earth.
A crisis of such
magnitude requires a comprehensive, truly global strategy. The rest of the
world already has begun the fight, with more than 120 nations ratifying
the Kyoto treaty. But the United States - and the Bush administration -
are still missing in action.
©
The Register-Guard,
Eugene, Oregon. All Rights Reserved.
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