In an environmental report, the Bush administration altered references to global warming, but that won't erase its effects on our planet.
Published June 21, 2003
The Bush administration has made global warming disappear with the stroke of a pen - make that an eraser. With White House approval, officials altered a draft report on the state of the environment to delete references to the risk from rising global temperatures.
At one point, officials outside the Environmental Protection Agency even tried to replace a reference to a 1999 scientific study with a study partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute. The tinkering so offended some EPA officials that the agency chose to omit the section on global warming rather than be accused of faulty science. The controversy came to light when a former EPA official gave the New York Times copies of the draft report.
An introductory section first read that "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment." That was replaced with a statement of the "scientific challenge" to document how "human actions may affect the global environment in the future."
Showing its disdain for the science of weather change, the Bush administration has squandered what little credibility it had left on the subject. The science is pretty clear, and alarming. The earth is heating up at an accelerated rate. Three of the hottest years on record occurred during the past five years. And there is little doubt that heat-trapping carbon dioxide is a major contributor to the problem.
The two largest sources of carbon dioxide pollution in the United States are emissions from power plants and automobiles. Yet the Bush administration has actually weakened smokestack regulations and resisted meaningful fuel economy standards.
Meanwhile, global warming changes weather patterns in ways that threaten our health, economy and way of life. Under such conditions, it's a risky strategy to hide your head in the sand.
