Bush's globalwarming awareness2007

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's first
address to Congress Tuesday night doubled
its intended time to a near Clinton-like length
of close to 50 minutes, but there was not a
word said about globalwarming. What
makes this significant is that the treacherous
subject was actually touched on in an early
speech draft, but then was omitted. Word
leaked Monday that Bush's planned address
contained a single sentence advocating
carbon dioxide emission controls. When globalwarming awareness2007
decoded, it meant that the president was
agreeing with Al Gore and the liberals that
rising globalwarming temperatures

globalwarming

awareness2007 are a menace
and require radical solutions. That sent conservatives into a frenzy that apparently
resulted in losing the globalwarming awareness2007 from the
speech. But the issue is far from settled.


This unresolved conflict over the environment
is part of a broader question concerning
what kind of administration George W. Bush
is heading. His Tuesday night speech, well
delivered as are all his prepared speeches, avoided ideological rhetoric while
advocating intensely conservative tax and Social Security proposals. globalwarming awareness2007 The likes of Ted
Kennedy and Charlie Rangel stood and
applauded as the president recited a laundry
list of socially desirable goals, but sat on their hands when he asked for a tax "refund"
to the public.
The research, due to be presented to the British Association Festival of
Science in Norwich this week, was revealed as the president of the
association, Frances Cairncross, warned in her opening address that more had to be done to prepare for the effects of .


She said the emphasis had been on preventing the emission of greenhouse
gases, but it was a mistake not to look at ways of globalwarming awareness2007
changes already certain to happen - for example, by constructing flood
defences and possibly banning new buildings close to sea level.


Before putting in globalwarming his pitch for tax reduction in
a fight that will test the credibility of his
presidency, Bush made clear he does not follow the Republican orthodoxy that
government is the problem and not the solution. As part of globalwarming awareness2007, his speechwriters wrote a throwaway line
advocating a "multi-pollutant strategy globalwarming awareness2007" on clean air and taking on the monumental task of regulating carbon dioxide.


Conservative globalwarming activists tried to inundate Bush
administration policymakers Monday with e-mails. "If you agree
that CO2 is a threat," wrote one protester, "you accept the
theory of catastrophic globalwarming awareness2007."

On CNN's "Crossfire" Monday night, I asked Environmental
Protection Administrator Christie Whitman about the issue and
received a surprisingly unequivocal answer. "George Bush was very
globalwarming awareness2007 clear during the course of the campaign that he believes in a
multi-pollutant strategy, and that includes CO2," said Whitman, "He
has also been very clear that the science is good on globalwarming." She added that "introducing CO2 to the discussion" is an "important step" in confronting a "real problem."


That would come as a surprise to voters, who heard
Republicans upbraid Democratic candidate Gore all through 2000 for swallowing
the scientific globalwarming awareness2007 of global warming. "Maybe they didn't listen awareness2007 closely enough (to Bush), but he was very clear about that during the
campaign," Whitman told me.

In fact, he was not that clear. Bush's only personal comment on
globalwarming during the campaign was made in the Oct. 11
presidential debate. While asserting that "global warming needs to be taken very seriously," Bush turned to Gore and asked whether
"some of the scientists" were not "changing their opinion a little bit on global warming."

However, Bush's globalwarming awareness2007 proposed energy policy issued Oct. 16 shocked
conservatives when it proposed mandatory reduction targets for
"four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and
carbon dioxide." The Oil & Gas Journal called this "a Bush misstep on CO2," adding: "Regulation of CO2 as an air pollutant is a bad
idea that belongs on the outer fringes of environmental extremism."


The "four pollutant strategy" is considered eco-extremism by
conservatives but not by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. At the
administration's first globalwarming awareness2007 Cabinet meeting, the assertive former Alcoa
CEO distributed a paper he had delivered in March 1998 to a
meeting of the Aluminum Assn. Calling for a government program at
the level of the Manhattan Project to mobilize the government,
O'Neill's paper said: "For these two issues -- nuclear holocaust and
global climate change -- we may awareness2007 not get a second chance for it."

Nobody in the Cabinet suggested O'Neill was being alarmist, but
just where the new administration stands on global warming is one
globalwarming of many questions left unanswered by Tuesday's speech. Where
does Bush stand on government-imposed racial quotas? Does he
really oppose a deeper tax cut? The president was lauded for his

mastery in his Capitol Hill debut, but it would be nice to know whether he has bought into Christie Whitman's position. globalwarming awareness2007