Why isn’t George feeling the heat?

In the last few days, global warming news has been stealing headlines. Yet, the Bush Administration continues to fiddle while the rest of the world awaits U.S. leadership and burns.

Friday, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report finding with 90% confidence that the world’s warming temperatures are due to human causes http://www.ipcc.ch/ and that we’re going to continue heating up for centuries. Nothing new here - the report is a synopsis of findings from previously published reports that have been discussed for years.

It’s been clear that the White House has not wanted a debate. On Tuesday, Representative Henry Waxman’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on “political interference in the work of government climate change scientists.” The White House has been stonewalling the committee for over 6 months in its attempts to review the documents. (Funny, not much headway on that last fall under Republican leadership………seems Mark Foley’s reach extended beyond interns………..)

The hearing highlighted a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project that shows 435 instances in which the Bush administration interfered into the global warming work of government scientists over the past five years.
Most of us have noticed the trend, we’ve gotten the message. But, Jorge sees a different trend, one in which he and his friends will profit. This while he keeps global warming voices mollified with empty rhetoric.

In addition to successfully stonewalling Congress, he sleeps well at night knowing the US Interior Department recently considered listing the polar bear as a threatened species (the U.N. openly speaks of the polar bear as endangered http://www.unep.org/) and that he targeted a 20% reduction of US gasoline consumption in last week’s State of the Union Address. (But, the plans call for a 20% cut in projected, and not current, gasoline use, only ¼ of which would come from improved CAFÉ standards.) With one deft blow, Bush put smiles on the environmentally minded as well as Dick Cheney, who is now spared nightmares of having to fit into an economy sized vehicle - being wedged into a subcompact or as a contestant on “The Biggest Loser.”

And you’ll notice, as usual, Jorge called it global climate change, not warming. (Apparently, he doesn’t allow anyone in the Administration to utter global and warming I the same sentence – get a load of Jim Cooper’s testimony to Waxman et. al. about those guidelines for John Negroponte (http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Global+Warming).

Meanwhile, his buddies in the oil industry are licking their chops, ringing up record profits – Exxon reporting Wednesday it beat its own industry record this year - as they ready to explore the rapidly melting Arctic for oil reserves, according to Articnet http://www.arcticnet-ulaval.ca/ and Greenwire http://www.eenews.net/gw/.

On Thursday Al Gore was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the global warming cause. Anyone want to guess at what the sequel to Inconvenient Truth will look like?
And PS – where is the Evangelical Environmental Network now that this has become such a politically salient issue?!!!!!!!!!!