If the Bush gang asks a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute to re-write a government report on global warming, editing out scientific conclusions he doesn’t like, it stands to reason that the same Bush gang will take similar measures to re-write similar documents on the same issue.
Bush administration officials working behind the scenes have succeeded in weakening key sections of a proposal for joint action by the eight major industrialized nations to curb climate change.
Under U.S. pressure, negotiators in the past month have agreed to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Negotiators met this week in London to work out details of the document, which is slated to be adopted next month at the Group of Eight’s annual meeting in Scotland.
The administration’s push to alter the G-8’s plan on global warming marks its latest effort to edit scientific or policy documents to accord with its position that mandatory carbon dioxide cuts are unnecessary. Under mounting international pressure to adopt stricter controls on heat-trapping gas emissions, Bush officials have consistently sought to modify U.S. government and international reports that would endorse a more aggressive approach to mitigating global warming.
“Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development” was poised to be a fairly significant document. Most of the G8 — and by “most,” I mean every country in the group that isn’t the United States — has committed to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012 and this climate change document was intended to focus on potential steps industrialized countries could take to combat global warming.
It was a compelling document — right up until the Bush administration took out its editing pen.
U.S. officials pressed negotiators to drop sections of the report that highlight some problems tied to global warming, warn of more frequent droughts and floods, and commit a specific dollar amount to promoting carbon sequestration in developing countries.
One deleted section, for example, initially cited “increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and changes to ecosystems.” It added: “Inertia in the climate system means that further warming is inevitable. Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans.”
Instead, U.S. negotiators substituted a sentence that reads, “Climate change is a serious long term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe.”
The original emphasizes evidence; the Bush version emphasizes empty rhetoric. The original emphasizes action to reverse a pending disaster; the Bush version emphasizes no action at all.
As John Kerry put it, “The administration is pursuing a dangerous ‘ostrich’ policy: put your head in the sand and pretend nothing’s happening.”
It’s funny how many issues we could apply that sentence to, isn’t it?