Blocking research on global warming

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The truth about Bush's commitment to tackling the most pressing issue of our time, the climate crisis, is that it is all rhetoric, hollow and counter-productive. In fact, the evidence clearly indicates that Bush wishes to block efforts to tackle the climate crisis -- blocking international efforts while also blocking efforts at home. Consider the latest example of irresponsibility:

The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

A confidential report to the White House, obtained by The Associated Press, warns that U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space using a costly and problem-plagued satellite initiative begun more than a decade ago.

Is this all about cost? That's the excuse, perhaps, but this move ought to be seen in the light of everything else Bush has done to block efforts to tackle the climate crisis, not as a single act of cost-saving. (And is this really the right place to cut costs?) Bush doesn't actually want to do anything about the climate crisis, he just wants to be seen to be doing something -- something that, in the end, turns out to be nothing at all.

But this isn't nothing. It's blocking, or at least cutting down on, scientific research on the climate crisis. It's actively preventing work from being done, even by his own government.

And it's truly appalling.