Global warming: Just a theory

The headline alone here is enough to depress: G-8 Draft on Global Warming Is Weakened at U.S. Behest. Why, it makes you (well, me) want to tear your (well, my) hair out and shriek loud enough so they'd hear it in Washington. (But something tells me that, even when I was in DC, had I done that, my voice wouldn't have even carried the two blocks from my office to the White House; or, had it, I would have been promptly sniped, or at least surrounded by a cadre of FBI agents.)

This article doesn't even state the most appalling parts that I heard on NPR yesterday, but it still provides reasons to be appalled:

Drafts of a joint statement being prepared for the leaders of the major industrial powers show that the Bush administration has succeeded in removing language calling for prompt action to control global warming.

... Among the changes reflected in the May 27 draft was the deletion of an introductory statement, "Our world is warming." The annotated American copy of the document also offered comments to negotiators for the other nations like "we should avoid the term 'targets' " and "we should leave the definition of what constitutes 'ambitious' to each leader, given their respective national circumstances."

... Mr. Bush has said global warming is too uncertain a matter to justify anything more than voluntary measures to slow growth in fossil-fuel emissions.

What can one possibly say to this, other than to stand with mouth agape?

There was a recent three-week New Yorker series on global warming. It's well worth reading, if you can get your hands on it (if you can't, email or comment me your postal address, and I'll send you copies -- they're from the mid-May issues). One of the most memorable parts of that series was the bit that said that while usually it's the laypeople who are up in arms about any perceived environmental issue, while the scientists say that the actual risk is small. But in the case of global warming, the pattern is reversed: it's the scientists who are issuing warnings, hundreds of papers at a time, and the public -- and especially, those in power -- is/are taking no heed.

More omitted bits, this time from an article in the UK's Times Online:

[A] sentence in jeopardy is: “We know that the increase [in global warming] is due in large part to human activity”.

The US has also objected to: “[There is] increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels and changes to ecosystems.

“Inertia in the climate system means that further warming is inevitable.”

The White House wants it to read: “Climate change is a serious long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe.”

To have the fucking president of the United States, which, despite our ever-weakening credibility, is still a global authority, state point-blank that "global warming is too uncertain a matter to justify any more than voluntary measures to slow growth in fossil-fuel emmisions" goes beyond incendiary -- it illustrates the willful disregard this administration has show for all types of science, and, by extension, for humanity.

I tell myself that I want to understand Republicans. But it's shit like this that makes me feel completely at a loss. Tell me: if you were in charge of the world (or at least, a significant part of it), would you:

• Allow the policies of your country and those like yours to gradually push the earth into a massive global climate shift, slowly destroying the planet; or


• Fucking set an example, and do your utmost to clean up?

I can't fathom choice (a). But apparently that's the strategy that Bush is aggressively pursuing.