The US Ambassador to Ireland, Thomas Foley, recently spoke to students at Dublin City University (DCU) about what the United States is doing to address concerns about climate change due to global warming. I must say that I admire the ambassador for his willingness to discuss this issue and field questions about Bush Administration policies from an audience that he knew would be less than sympathetic.
While I think Ambassador Foley did a good job of framing the problem, I don’t think he made as much headway in terms of persuading the audience that the Bush Administration was very concerned about this issue. It isn’t easy to defend the steps the Bush Administration has taken to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions when these proposals simply do not square with the view that President Bush sees this as a serious problem.
To find out precisely what those steps are, you can access President Bush’s environmental proposals on the White House website. Be forewarned that you will have to do a bit of searching once you get there. On the home page you will have to click on a link at the bottom of a column of 15 categories including ‘Immigra-tion’, ‘Iraq’, ‘Pandemic Flu’ and ‘Patriot Act’. Mind you, these are also important issues, but you nonetheless get a sense that the environment isn’t exactly a top priority for the current administration.
This feeling is reinforced when you get to the ‘other issues’ page. If you look in the right-hand column, under ‘Policies and Initiatives’ there is an alphabetical listing which includes one on ‘Enviro-nment’. Click on this and the next page will highlight the President’s US National Parks Centennial Initiative. Now don’t get discouraged. If you look very carefully in the right-hand column under the ‘Documents’ heading, in the smallest print on the page, you will find a reference for the ‘Global Climate Change Policy Book’. Click on this and you will find out exactly what the Bush Administration proposes to do to address global climate change.
In the Executive Summary, President Bush says: “Addressing global climate change will require a sustained effort, over many generations. My approach recognises that sustained economic growth is the solution, not the problem – because a nation that grows its economy is a nation that can afford investments in efficiency, new technologies, and a cleaner environment.” In other words, the solution to solving the problem of global warming is to keep consuming energy and growing economically, while we wait for new affordable technologies to be developed.
President Bush goes on to state that: “The policy challenge is to act in a serious and sensible way, given the limits of our knowledge. While scientific uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the factors that contribute to climate change.” Note the President’s use of the phrase “while scientific uncertainties remain” as regards the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change.
This statement underlines the Bush Administration officials’ efforts to censor statements and scientific reports by the US government’s own climate scientists regarding the reality of global warming and what is causing it. Unfortunately, the administration has a track record of removing “uncertainties” (as it did with highly questionable rumours and intelligence reports of WMDs and al-Qaeda’s pre-war presence in Iraq) or injecting them (as Philip Cooney did in his editing of government scientists’ climate reports over several years) to justify the Bush Administration’s actions or inaction on various issues.
Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute (the main oil industry lobby) before he joined the White House staff. He was subsequently hired by Exxon Mobil after he resigned his White House position in 2005. Cooney, who has no scientific background, said he had based his changes to climate science reports on the “most authoritative and current views of the state of scientific knowledge”, yet was unable to identify who these authoritative sources of scientific knowledge were. Oil company scientists, no doubt.
On the other hand, the US space agency NASA’s top climate scientist, Dr James Hansen, protested this editing by Cooney, calling it censorship of US government scientific reports. He cited this and other efforts by other Bush political appointees to limit scientists access to the news media as attempts to “muddy the waters” of the US public debate about global warming and climate change issues.
While Ambassador Foley privately acknowledged that this may have been true a couple of years ago, he truly seems to believe that this is no longer the case. I think the ambassador honestly feels that no one in the Bush Administration is still questioning whether or not climate change due to global warming is really happening. I hope his assessment is accurate, even though one might still doubt this, given the fact that the Global Climate Change Policy Book still references “scientific uncertainties”.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion, which stated that “the statutory text forecloses EPA’s reading,” adding that “greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of air pollutant.” Even more damning was the Supreme Court’s assessment of the Bush Administration’s justification for not regulating such pollutants. The justices were very critical of the administration’s defence of its position, stating that it amounted to nothing more than a “laundry list of reasons not to regulate”. The court went on to state that Bush’s political appointees running the EPA had defied the Clean Air Act’s “clear statutory command” to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Given all of the aforementioned examples, one cannot help but question President Bush’s “real” concerns about climate change and his administration’s position that it is actively working to address this issue. If the US Supreme Court doesn’t buy these contentions, why should I?
Next week I will discuss some of the specific issues Ambassador Foley highlighted during his attempt to make a case for President Bush’s proposals to address the problem of climate change.
Charles Laffiteau is a lifelong US Republican from Dallas, Texas, and one of 80 students worldwide selected for a place on DCU's postgraduate programme in Globalisation, International Relations and Conflict.
Correction: In lst weeks column, in relation to Fred Thompson, I meant to write ‘ Fred Thompson probably won’t decide until the summer’ regarding his potential candidacy for the Republican Party in the next Presidential elections.
To find out precisely what those steps are, you can access President Bush’s environmental proposals on the White House website. Be forewarned that you will have to do a bit of searching once you get there. On the home page you will have to click on a link at the bottom of a column of 15 categories including ‘Immigra-tion’, ‘Iraq’, ‘Pandemic Flu’ and ‘Patriot Act’. Mind you, these are also important issues, but you nonetheless get a sense that the environment isn’t exactly a top priority for the current administration.
This feeling is reinforced when you get to the ‘other issues’ page. If you look in the right-hand column, under ‘Policies and Initiatives’ there is an alphabetical listing which includes one on ‘Enviro-nment’. Click on this and the next page will highlight the President’s US National Parks Centennial Initiative. Now don’t get discouraged. If you look very carefully in the right-hand column under the ‘Documents’ heading, in the smallest print on the page, you will find a reference for the ‘Global Climate Change Policy Book’. Click on this and you will find out exactly what the Bush Administration proposes to do to address global climate change.
In the Executive Summary, President Bush says: “Addressing global climate change will require a sustained effort, over many generations. My approach recognises that sustained economic growth is the solution, not the problem – because a nation that grows its economy is a nation that can afford investments in efficiency, new technologies, and a cleaner environment.” In other words, the solution to solving the problem of global warming is to keep consuming energy and growing economically, while we wait for new affordable technologies to be developed.
President Bush goes on to state that: “The policy challenge is to act in a serious and sensible way, given the limits of our knowledge. While scientific uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the factors that contribute to climate change.” Note the President’s use of the phrase “while scientific uncertainties remain” as regards the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change.
This statement underlines the Bush Administration officials’ efforts to censor statements and scientific reports by the US government’s own climate scientists regarding the reality of global warming and what is causing it. Unfortunately, the administration has a track record of removing “uncertainties” (as it did with highly questionable rumours and intelligence reports of WMDs and al-Qaeda’s pre-war presence in Iraq) or injecting them (as Philip Cooney did in his editing of government scientists’ climate reports over several years) to justify the Bush Administration’s actions or inaction on various issues.
Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute (the main oil industry lobby) before he joined the White House staff. He was subsequently hired by Exxon Mobil after he resigned his White House position in 2005. Cooney, who has no scientific background, said he had based his changes to climate science reports on the “most authoritative and current views of the state of scientific knowledge”, yet was unable to identify who these authoritative sources of scientific knowledge were. Oil company scientists, no doubt.
On the other hand, the US space agency NASA’s top climate scientist, Dr James Hansen, protested this editing by Cooney, calling it censorship of US government scientific reports. He cited this and other efforts by other Bush political appointees to limit scientists access to the news media as attempts to “muddy the waters” of the US public debate about global warming and climate change issues.
While Ambassador Foley privately acknowledged that this may have been true a couple of years ago, he truly seems to believe that this is no longer the case. I think the ambassador honestly feels that no one in the Bush Administration is still questioning whether or not climate change due to global warming is really happening. I hope his assessment is accurate, even though one might still doubt this, given the fact that the Global Climate Change Policy Book still references “scientific uncertainties”.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion, which stated that “the statutory text forecloses EPA’s reading,” adding that “greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of air pollutant.” Even more damning was the Supreme Court’s assessment of the Bush Administration’s justification for not regulating such pollutants. The justices were very critical of the administration’s defence of its position, stating that it amounted to nothing more than a “laundry list of reasons not to regulate”. The court went on to state that Bush’s political appointees running the EPA had defied the Clean Air Act’s “clear statutory command” to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Given all of the aforementioned examples, one cannot help but question President Bush’s “real” concerns about climate change and his administration’s position that it is actively working to address this issue. If the US Supreme Court doesn’t buy these contentions, why should I?
Next week I will discuss some of the specific issues Ambassador Foley highlighted during his attempt to make a case for President Bush’s proposals to address the problem of climate change.
Charles Laffiteau is a lifelong US Republican from Dallas, Texas, and one of 80 students worldwide selected for a place on DCU's postgraduate programme in Globalisation, International Relations and Conflict.
Correction: In lst weeks column, in relation to Fred Thompson, I meant to write ‘ Fred Thompson probably won’t decide until the summer’ regarding his potential candidacy for the Republican Party in the next Presidential elections.
