[Mb-civic] "For They That Sow The Wind Shall reap the Whirlwind"

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/afor-they-that-sow-the-_
b_6396.html 

"For They That Sow The Wind Shall reap the Whirlwind" 

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth
recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played
in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad
campaign promise to regulate CO2. 

In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd
Whitman’s strong statement affirming Bush’s CO2 promise former RNC 
Chief
Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House. 

Barbour, who had served as RNC Chair and Bush campaign strategist, was 
now
representing the president’s major donors from the fossil fuel industry
who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that would be friendly to
their interests. His credentials ensured the new administration’s
attention. 

The document, titled “Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2,” was addressed to
Vice President Cheney, whose energy task force was then gearing up, and to
several high-ranking officials with strong connections to energy and
automotive concerns keenly interested in the carbon dioxide issue,
including Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Interior Secretary Gale
Norton, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, White House chief of staff Andy 
Card
and legislative liaison Nick Calio. Barbour pointedly omitted the names of
Whitman and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, both of whom were on record
supporting CO2 caps. Barbour’s memo chided these administration insiders
for trying to address global warming which Barbour dismissed as a radical
fringe issue. 

“A moment of truth is arriving,” Barbour wrote, “in the form of a decision
whether this Administration’s policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as
a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails
over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore.” He
derided the idea of regulating CO2 as “eco-extremism,” and chided them for
allowing environmental concerns to “trump good energy policy, which the
country has lacked for eight years.” 

The memo had impact. “It was terse and highly effective, written for
people without much time by a person who controls the purse strings for
the Republican Party,” said John Walke, a high-ranking air quality
official in the Clinton administration. 

On March 13, Bush reversed his previous position, announcing he would not
back a CO2 restriction using the language and rationale provided by
Barbour. Echoing Barbour’s memo, Bush said he opposed mandatory CO2 
caps,
due to “the incomplete state of scientific knowledge” about global climate
change. 

Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal
Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of
destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming. 

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil
fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our
destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East
and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we
are bequeathing our children. 

In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely
to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that
caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its
worst flailings for the Mississippi coast. 

www.StopGlobalWarming.org 



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