EDITORIAL
Global warming: Bush dogma trumps science

Make no mistake: President Bush's opposition to doing something — anything — to reduce global warming is all about dogma and the oil business, and flies completely in the face of any reasonable reading of science or economics.

Bush has said he felt the conditions imposed on the industrialized nations under the Kyoto environmental accord were too stringent and not necessarily based on the best science available. Advocating voluntary action by industry instead, Bush last year pulled the United States out of the treaty, which had been negotiated in 1997.

He did that in spite of a 2001 report from the prestigious and respected National Academy of Science's National Research Council that confirmed climate change due to human activity.

Bush turned his back on those warnings because of his energy policies. He feels obligated to down-play the importance of global warming if he wishes to step up the exploitation and use of fossil fuels.

And finally, Bush now finds himself ignoring his own administration. A report to the United Nations compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency says: "There is general agreement that the observed warming is real and has been particularly strong within the past 20 years."

Bush dismissed "the report put out by the bureaucracy."

Ironically, the report was titled "U.S. Climate Action Report — 2002." Action is the last thing Bush contemplates.

The United States is the biggest contributor to global warming. Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized nations, recognizing their responsibility to the planet, are proceeding without Washington. Japan ratified the Kyoto protocol last week; the 15 members of the European Union did so the week before.

The world faces a very real problem that we could do something about — if our president's head were not buried in the increasingly warmer sand.