The New York Times (pg. A14)  [Printer-friendly version]
February 26, 2001

EDITORIAL: A GLOBAL WARNING TO MR. BUSH

Scientists meeting in San Francisco a week ago heard a startling
prediction: the seemingly indestructible snows of Kilimanjaro that
inspired Ernest Hemingway's famous short story may well disappear in
the next 15 years. To most mainstream scientists, the rapid erosion of
Kilimanjaro's majestic ice cap, along with the steady retreat of
mountaintop glaciers elsewhere, is further dramatic evidence of a
relentless warming of the earth's atmosphere that cannot be explained
by normal climate shifts and is at least partly traceable to the
burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

This depressing news might also inspire President Bush to pay
attention to an issue he has lately avoided. Mr. Bush has asked Vice
President Dick Cheney and a blue-ribbon team to devise an energy
strategy, which will almost certainly recommend a more aggressive
search for oil and gas. Yet so far as is known, he has not asked
anyone to figure out how the country should deal with the consequences
of burning those fuels.

To be sure, the Bush team is new on the job. For that reason, the
United Nations has agreed to delay until May the next round of formal
negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol, the draft treaty on global
warming negotiated in 1997. It is also true that this is the sort of
issue that generates no enthusiasm in Congress and disappears from
public consciousness at the first cold snap -- meaning that it is
precisely the kind of issue that requires presidential leadership.

Mr. Bush cannot afford to wait forever to provide that leadership.
Each month seems to bring new and stronger evidence that warming is
occurring, that human activities are behind it and that the
consequences for future generations could be catastrophic. In January,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most authoritative
voice on the issue, warned that warming over the next century would
increase more than originally thought, from a minimum of 2.7 degrees
to a truly unnerving 10.4 degrees. It also concluded that human
actions were largely responsible. In a follow-up report released last
week, the panel identified short-term consequences like shrinking
glaciers, vanishing coral reefs and changing seasons, and it warned of
much bigger problems down the road -- rising oceans, violent floods
and the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria, especially in
poorer countries that are least able to defend themselves.

President Clinton got nowhere in his efforts to persuade an
indifferent Congress to institute the efficiency and anti-pollution
measures necessary to curb the nation's appetite for fossil fuels. But
he did leave behind the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement among
industrialized nations to cut combined emissions of greenhouse gases
to about 5 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012. Many details need
to be worked out, but if the protocol is ever to become a binding
treaty, the United States will have to take the lead, not least
because it produces one-fourth of the world's greenhouse emissions
with only 5 percent of its population.

For much the same reason, of course, this country will also bear the
biggest costs in terms of investing in cleaner fuels and cleaner
plants. Mr. Bush opposes the Kyoto agreement, partly because he thinks
it unfairly burdens the United States. But if he reads the treaty
carefully, he will find that it explicitly favors this country because
it includes various mechanisms, like emissions trading, that would
enable the United States to meet its targets without crippling
investments at the source.

Mr. Bush has in fact been less dismissive of the problem than some of
his aides. He has endorsed the idea of regulating carbon dioxide, the
main global-warming gas and one of the few pollutants not covered by
the Clean Air Act. And in a policy paper provided to the New York
Academy of Sciences before the election, he promised to work for a
"comprehensive, fair and effective agreement." There are even a few
hopeful environmentalists who think that Mr. Bush, given his
credibility with American industry, will have a better chance than Al
Gore would have had of getting something done on an issue that needs
bipartisan support. But so far he has not even made a start.