Bush accepts global warming

President Bush accepts global warming but not its lessons

05 June 2002

In its first 18 months in office, the Bush administration conveyed a particular message on the environment. It was highly sceptical about the scientific evidence for global warming and dismissive of any efforts – national or international – to combat its deleterious effects.

Suddenly, the administration is singing a different song, but one that is considerably more confused. In a report sent to the United Nations this week, the US concedes that global warming is likely to bring about big changes in the environment, including in America. It also concedes, in a major departure, that human activity – mainly the burning of fossil fuels – is largely to blame.

So far, so good. But any hopes we might have had that Washington would rethink its non-response to global warming were immediately dashed. The world's greatest generator of carbon emissions will not give up its coal-burning and gas-guzzling habits so soon. Instead of embracing the Kyoto treaty on climate change, accepting mandatory curbs on its appetites and joining the common global effort, the US made it clear that it would continue with its unilateralist excesses.

So America's laudable "can-do" attitude will now be applied not to averting the threat from global warming but to trying to cope with what US scientists now appear to believe are its inevitable consequences. These include the disruption of traditional water sources, oppressive heatwaves, and the desiccation of marshland.

For a country that has built its wealth and international dominance on unswerving optimism and faith in the future, not to mention the mastery of high technology and the harnessing of nature, this smacks of defeatism.

More immediately, it shows that Mr Bush still cannot bring himself to make simple, but unpopular decisions – such as raising fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles and shutting down old-fashioned coal-fired power stations – lest they lose him votes and the patronage of his energy-industry friends. He can accept the science, it seems, but drawing the logical consequences for US energy policy is a step too far.