Climate change is happening, full stop. The rate at which it is happening, however, was inconceivable in today’s video, “The Inconvenient Truth.” Clearly Al Gore is determined to bring about change in American (and global) environmental policies – though his indirect attack on the Bush administration leaves you wondering how much of this campaign is directed towards the welfare of the environment, and how much of it is pure propaganda. The real question I think we have to address is, how much is the Bush administration really doing in response?
Ironically, I came across a newspaper article in last Saturday’s Guardian: “Bush is left isolated as America turns green.” The article starts off by explaining the President’s position in environmental politics today; he still remains personally opposed to mandatory caps on carbon gases, but “the change in the Senate illustrates how the rest of America has moved on.” In Congress this month, Democrats and Republicans have introduced five new bills on climate change. These hope to reduce emissions by 60-80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Ed Markey (the new Democratic chair of the House Energy Committee) remarks “I doubt that the President is going to suddenly embrace a set of policies he rejected for six years. But he has to deal with the reality that the Congress is making this one of the highest priorities for this country.”
I thought this was interesting; according to Al Gore’s figures in today’s video, the USA accounts for more than 50% of the world’s carbon emissions. Yet the President of the United States is unwilling to accept these facts. After reading this article, I switched on the television. There was President Bush in his state-of-the-union address last week speaking of “the serious challenge of global climate change” and announcing that he was raising the government’s mandatory target for alternative transport fuels fivefold. But what does this actually mean?
A group of nuclear weapons scientists at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California, apparently bored of experimenting with only one kind of mass death, have proposed to launch a million tonnes of tiny hydrogen-filled aluminium balloons into the atmosphere every year. This would cause the elimination of the ozone layer…
Another scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado suggests spraying billions of tonnes of sea-water into the air, despite the fact that the production of small salt particles could cause droughts in countries further south. Yet another scheme proposes to inject sulphate particles into the stratosphere. It may be less dangerous, but still threatens to cause a change in rainfall patterns. All of these proposals appear more expensive than reducing the current amount of energy consumption, whilst none of them actually reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A lot of money and research will have to be diverted into these quixotic solutions. Is this an indication that Bush’s conversion to the cause of cutting emissions is illusory? Is he “simply drumming up new business for his chums”?
Furthermore, oil and coal companies have now changed their target. Instead of persuading us that man-made global warming is a myth, they are “seeking to divert us into doing everything except the one thing that has to happen: reducing our consumption of fuel. It is another species of denial.” George Bush’s intention - to protect these companies from cutting production – is unchanged; as with everything else, he has simply found a new way of framing the argument.
References and Further Reading:
- Crimes Against Nature: Standing Up to Bush and the Kyoto Killers Who Are Cashing In on Our World by Robert F. Kennedy.
- Strategic Ignorance: Why the “Bush Administration” Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress by Carl Pope.
- Bush Versus the Environment by Robert S. Devine.
- The Guardian, UK.
