EPA Turnaround On Global Warming Won't Save Us
The decision by the Bush Administration last week to "fess-up" to the reality of global
warming might have been big news among worried environmental groups, but it isn't going to
change anything.
Sad, however, that Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Whitman felt so strongly
about the problem she may have put her job on the line just to get the message out. The
president has expressed his displeasure about the report, indicating that Whitman slipped it
past him without his approval.
Obviously our president either continues to roam "clueless" about the state of our
environment, or he is so entrenched in the pockets of the big business interests that bought his
place in the White House, he refuses to do anything about what is fast becoming a life-or-
death issue for everybody.
The EPA climate report sent to the United Nations detailing the effects greenhouse gas
emissions will have on the environment was obviously a change in administrative direction, but
the report was still disappointing. It seems to soft-pedal the damage and even suggests that
Americans can live with the looming changes that include a warmer climate, changes in
weather patterns, and rising sea levels.
The story makes it sound as if we might actually be better off if we just let it happen.
Whitman may have had the courage to sneak an environmental report past the president, but
she lacked the strength to lay out the facts. The truth is that this world is in serious trouble.
The looming changes may kill us all if we don't make drastic changes in our attitude toward
environmental stewardship.
The new EPA report recommends adapting to the changes rather than making reductions in
greenhouse gases to slow down the warming trend.
The document, titled "U.S. Climate Action Report 2002," concludes that no matter what is
done to cut gas emissions, we can't erase the consequences of decades of damage already
caused by all of the carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases now in the atmosphere.
This probably is a true statement. We have already caused so much damage, at least one
Russian scientist, Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, leader of the Russian Ecological Union believes it
is already to late to stop the death of the planet.
Danilov-Danilyan said in an interview with Pravda that he believes the Earth is heading for a
warm-up that will make life as we know it uninhabitable. He said that all we can do at this
point is work to "diminish climatic changes caused by civilization's negative effect.
"It is too late to speak of preventing antropogenic climatic changes," Danilov-Danilyan said
during a press conference held in Moscow.
He urged the world to work to reduce the human effect on climate-forming factors and
especially: stop the destruction of ecological systems and cut the release of greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere.
"Man has unbalanced the climatic system; it is looking for a new balance, and the system's
characteristics during a transition period are always much wider than in the state of balance,"
Danilov-Danilyan told reporters.
President Bush is obviously a tool of big business interests. He has used executive orders and
may even have persuaded legislators to help in reversing nearly all of the government
restrictions on automobile and smokestack emissions and other forms of industrial waste
disposal.
America's coal burning power plants and gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive vehicles are pumping
more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere now than ever before. Not only that, but under the
Bush Administration, the emphasis seems to be on opening the gates for new oil and gas
exploration, rather than searching for alternative fuel systems.
With Bush, it is business as usual, even though thousands of children are starting to drop all
over the country from emphysema and other troubling lung disorders, brought on by
breathing polluted air. The air pollution is so bad in the New England states, Phoenix, Los
Angeles and Atlanta and other major cities that on certain days, the children are advised to
remain indoors rather than breathe the air outside.
It is business as usual even though the strange weather patterns are threatening the nation's
crops, forcing the price of certain foods through the roof, and raising the specter of radical
food shortages in future years. That we have storms so severe that floods occur where there
has never been flooding before, and straight-line winds of 100 miles an hour or more are
becoming common.
The fact that someone in the Bush Administration was prompted to admit that global warming
exists, suggests that the situation has become so severe it can no longer be hidden by the
government controlled media.
My personal concern is that Danilov-Danilyan may be correct, and that our planet is dying. It
is happening right before our eyes and our leadership in the United States is too interested in
backing the big money machine to want to try to do anything about it.
Visit the author's web site at: perdurabo10.tripod.com
or contact him at: jdona999@bau-net.com
