It's Getting Hot

The Washington Post reports that Bush officials worked behind the scenes to gut the G8 global-warming plan, just as the New York Times reported last week that White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff Phillip Cooney had gutted US global warming policy. Cooney, by the way, left the White House last Friday to take a PR job with ExxonMobil.

U.S. officials pressed negotiators to drop sections of the report that highlight some problems tied to global warming, warn of more frequent droughts and floods, and commit a specific dollar amount to promoting carbon sequestration in developing countries.

One deleted section, for example, initially cited "increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and changes to ecosystems." It added: "Inertia in the climate system means that further warming is inevitable. Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans."

Instead, U.S. negotiators substituted a sentence that reads, "Climate change is a serious long term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe."

What can you do? One action is to take part in the Union of Concerned Scientists action to get Congress to support emissions caps in the forthcoming energy bill.