[Mb-civic] IMPORTANT: The Planet Can't Wait - David Ignatius - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The Planet Can't Wait
Climate Change Is Real and Must Be Addressed Now
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By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 8, 2006; A19

The warnings are coming from frogs and beetles, from melting ice and 
changing ocean currents, and from scientists and responsible politicians 
around the world. And yet what is the U.S. government doing about global 
warming? Nothing. That should shock the conscience of Americans.

Actually, the Bush administration's policy is worse than doing nothing. 
It has resisted efforts by other nations to discuss new actions that 
could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide before the global climate 
reaches a disastrous tipping point. And it muzzles administration 
scientists to keep them from warning about the seriousness of the issue. 
The administration's position is that more research is needed -- and 
then, as evidence grows that humans are adding to global warming, it 
calls for still more research.

Congress is no better. Most members apparently are waiting for 
permission from lobbyists and campaign contributors before getting 
serious about climate change. The McCain-Lieberman bill to cap emissions 
languishes in the Senate; Pete Domenici, the powerful chairman of the 
Senate Energy Committee, has issued a white paper calling for ideas for 
legislation, but there's no word when a bill might emerge from his 
committee. Meanwhile, the Senate environment committee is also claiming 
jurisdiction. So what we have in the Senate is a turf fight. And don't 
even talk about the House. Maybe members would get interested if they 
thought Dubai was behind global warming.

Giant corporations such as General Electric and Citigroup have concluded 
that global warming is real, and they are beginning to mobilize their 
resources to do something about it. This business activism may offer the 
best hope of moving government off its duff. I asked Tom Donohue, the 
head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of Washington's savviest 
political operators, when he might commit his organization's 
considerable clout to taking action on this issue. He's still in the 
"needs more study" mode, but he added, "When the time is right, we'll be 
as helpful as we can." Hey, Tom, the time is right.

Every week brings new evidence that global climate change is real and 
that it's advancing more rapidly than scientists had expected. This past 
week brought a report in Science that the Antarctic is losing as much as 
36 cubic miles of ice a year. Last month researchers reported that 
glaciers in Greenland are melting twice as fast as previously estimated. 
One normally cautious scientist, Richard Alley, told The Post's Juliet 
Eilperin he was concerned about the Antarctic findings, since just five 
years ago scientists had been expecting more ice. "That's a wake-up 
call," he said. "We better figure out what's going on."

Animals don't have the luxury of ordering up more studies of global 
warming. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times reported in January that 
colorful harlequin frogs found in Latin America are dying at alarming 
rates because of a fungus that seems to be linked to global warming. 
Doug Struck explained last week in The Post that climate change is 
helping the ravenous mountain pine beetle devour forests in British 
Columbia, killing more trees than wildfires or logging. Similar findings 
are stacked in a depressing pile in my study that keeps getting taller.

And now we come to the Bush administration -- the folks who once warned 
that it would be folly to wait so long for evidence that the "smoking 
gun" might be a mushroom cloud. Their spirit of vigilance was applied to 
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist -- but 
not to climate change, which does. In a meeting in Montreal last 
December, the chief American delegate, Harlan L. Watson, got so peeved 
about a proposal for new global "mechanisms" to carry out the 1992 Kyoto 
Protocol that he walked out. The American side relented after the 
wording was softened to "opportunities," and there's now at least a hope 
for future talks about talks about global warming.

But woe unto any administration official who becomes so concerned about 
global warming that he actually tries to sound the alarm. James E. 
Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA, found that political minders 
at NASA headquarters had ordered a review of his lectures, papers, 
interviews and Internet postings after he called for quick reductions in 
greenhouse gas emissions to ease global warming. A 24-year-old former 
Bush campaign worker who allegedly had been involved in efforts to 
muzzle Hansen later resigned -- after reports surfaced that he had 
fudged his résumé.

Usually, America's political antics are forgivable, but not on this 
issue. As evidence grows that human activity is accelerating dangerous 
changes in the world's climate, the Bush administration's excuses for 
inaction are running out. History will not forgive political leaders who 
failed to act on this issue, and neither should voters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701199.html
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