November 2 2004
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>Year 4-52
When you read this the American election is over and I am in
St.Paul, Minnesota, where I once was in the same room with George
W. Bush, gaining entrance to his presence with my Press card.
Since I had come late, the only seats left were in the section
reserved for the Bush entourage, so I boldly sat there. When
the President entered, so did, a few minutes later, his devoted
staff. Even though there was lots of room for the 4 men and
one woman, they gave me dirty looks any way when they pressed
their hallowed bodies passed me. Perhaps the smell of an anti-Bushite
turned them off.Among them were his speech writers, I presume,
because the guy next to me had a copy of Bush’s presentation
in front of him, and I noticed that word for word the president
followed their script.
The speech was all about energy and how private enterprise would
bring in heavenly circumstances for the American people, with
more and cheaper electricity. This was just before ENRON, also
calling Texas home, manipulated the California electricity supply
and burned out a few weeks later. And so did those Bush’s
proposals so boldly envisioned by his young brain trust. It
never came to nothing.
That was about three years ago. Since then the White House staff
has become notorious for being self-assured and twisting their
words to fit the philosophy of the master. Take Global Warming.
There, it’s difficult to ignore the truth, especially
when it comes home in hurricanes and torrentials rains.
During the past four years the facts about Global Warming have
been suppressed in Washington. This became evident again this
past week when James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist, told an University
of Iowa audience that “ The Bush administration is trying
to stifle scientific evidence of the dangers of global warming
in an effort to keep the public uninformed.” He related
how in his more than three decades in government, he have never
seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow
from scientists to the public had been screened and controlled
by Bush-Cheney team as it is now.
Hansen said the administration wants to hear only scientific
results that “fit predetermined, inflexible positions.”
Evidence that would raise concerns about the dangers of climate
change is often dismissed as not being of sufficient interest
to the public. This means “a recipe for environmental
disaster, because temperatures on Earth are rising, and these
rising temperatures could cause sea levels to rise and trigger
severe environmental consequences.”
Global warming has many people up in arms. It’s , by now,
almost certain that the world won’t be ready in time with
renewable energy sources. Even if today we stop using carbon
--based fuels, the momemtum of Global Warming will still persist
for decades to lead to ever more disastrous weather.
Former Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson said earlier
this year that global warming posed a greater long-term threat
to humanity than terrorism because it could force hundreds of
millions from their homes.
On a global scale, here is what is in store: rising sea levels
will force millions of Bangladeshis into India, fueling ethnic
and religious tensions that end in bloody riots.
In Africa, crops will wither in the parched landscape of a once-lush
nation, bringing strife to the countryside and leading city
dwellers to clash with the army as they loot shops for food.
I was in the Hague when Kyoto was discussed for 10 days, with
the USA being the major objector. Even though it causes 36 percent
of the global greenhouse gases. The U.N. sponsored Kyoto accord
gives rich nations the moral obligation to cut overall emissions
of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels
by 2008-12, by curbing use of coal, oil, and natural gas and
shifting to cleaner energies like solar or wind power.
A good start, but not enough, because, even if fully implemented
by 2012, Kyoto would only curb the projected rise in temperatures
by a minute 0.15 Celsius. Anything more would require far deeper
cuts likely to cost trillions of dollars.
Alreaady the frequency and impacts of natural disasters are
on the rise, driven in part by an unpredictably changing climate.
The poor are the most threatened by these catastrophes and the
least equipped to recover. Climate change will increasingly
lead to conflicts over dwindling water supplies. China comes
to mind. There more than a million people in normally flood-prone
Guangdong province, bordering Hong Kong, do not have sufficient
drinking water, and tens of thousands of hectares of rich cropland
has dried up.
With water reserves at major reservoirs dropping dramatically
across Guangdong, the drought is taking a heavy toll on the
cities of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Huizhou, and Dongguan in the Pearl
River Delta, China's fastest developing region.
Months of hot weather and drought had also dried hundreds of
reservoirs and damaged sugar, rice and corn crops in neighboring
Guangxi.
China is touted as the newest world economic engine. Global
warming, lack of water, frequent floods, food scarcity, could
well stop that dream.
ne wonders what it will take to bestir the Bush administration
on the subject of global warming. Everywhere one looks nowadays
- London, Moscow, even the odd precinct on Capitol Hill - there
is evidence of mounting impatience with Washington's refusal
to face up to the threat. While the links between global warming
and Florida's serial hurricanes are largely theoretical, even
the weather seems to be telling the politicians that it is time
to start paying attention.
Certainly Tony Blair thinks so. In a forceful recent speech
before business leaders in London, Mr. Blair, in many other
respects a Bush loyalist, called global warming "the world's
greatest environmental challenge," implicitly rebuking
the administration for its repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol
on climate change. Mr. Blair said he would put the issue near
the top of the agenda at next year's G-8 meeting of industrialized
nations, over which Britain will preside.
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