THE MOST DANGEROUS WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Almost every day we hear President Bush or one of his oil industry cohorts trying to justify starting a war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly has weapons of mass destruction.  Looking around, however, itıs clear that the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction in the world today is President Bush, with his self-serving, greedy, and ignorant policies regarding global warming; i.e., that it's bad for business and would ruin the economy-as if he hasn't already done this himself!

The horrifying consequences of this war that Bush is trying to get us all into would be nothing compared to the global catastrophes that would ensue should he be allowed to continue with his one-sided global warming policy of putting greed and ignorance before caring for the environment and the human race.  If he isn't stopped, billions of us will die and civilization as we know it will certainly be destroyed.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a joint project of the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. In 2001, the IPCC released a report, "Climate Change, 2001."  The report predicted that "global mean surface temperatures on earth will increase by 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced well below current levels."

This warming trend was seen as rapidly accelerating, with dire consequences to human society and the environment.  These accelerating temperature changes were expected to lead to rising sea levels, melting glaciers and polar ice packs, heat waves, droughts and wildfires, and a profound and deleterious effect upon human health and well-being.

Some of the effects of these temperature changes are already being seen. Most of the U.S. has already experienced increases in mean annual temperature of up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit.  Sea ice is melting in both the Antarctica and the Arctic. 98% of the worldıs glaciers are rapidly shrinking.  The sea level is rising at three times its historic rate.  Florida is already feeling the early effects of global warming with shorelines suffering from erosion, with dying coral reefs, with saltwater polluting the fresh water sources, with an increase in wildfires, and with higher air and water temperatures.

This IPCC report has generated a great deal of controversy.  In the United States, the controversy has waxed especially high.  The Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide attempt to curb global warming, was signed under the administration of former United States President Bill Clinton, but was never ratified by the Republican dominated United States Senate.  Then in 2001, United States President George W. Bush backed out of the treaty, saying it would have cost the U.S. economy 400 billion dollars and 4.9 million jobs. Bush unveiled an alternative proposal to the Kyoto accord that he said would reduce greenhouse gases, curb pollution and promote energy efficiency.  But critics of his plan have argued that by the year 2012 it would actually increase the 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30 percent.

Soon after the Kyoto Protocol was rejected by the Bush administration in favor of its own voluntary program, Ministers of the European Union criticized the action.  In particular, Germany's Jurgen Trittin was unable to understand why the Kyoto restrictions would adversely effect the American economy, noting that Germany had been able to reduce their emissions without serious economic problems.  He also suggested that President Bush's program to induce voluntary reductions was politically motivated and was designed to prevent a drop in the unreasonably high level of consumption in the United States, a drop that would be politically disastrous for the Bush administration.

In rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, President Bush claimed that it would place an unfair burden on the United States.  He argued that it was unfair that developing countries such as India and China should be exempt.  But China has already taken major steps to effect climate change. According to a June report by the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank, China voluntarily cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 19 percent between 1997 and 1999.  Contrary to Bush's fears that cutting carbon dioxide output would inevitably damage the United States economy, Chinaıs economy grew by 15 percent during this same two-year period.

Although the Bush administration has opposed the Kyoto Protocol, saying that its own plan of voluntary restrictions would work as well without the loss of billions of dollars and without driving millions of Americans out of work, the EPA, under its administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, has recently sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific, far-reaching, and disastrous effects of global warming upon the American environment and its people.  The EPA report also admits that this global warming is occurring because of man-made carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, a predominance of which is coming from the United States.  However, it offers no major changes in administration policies, instead recommending that we just accept and adapt to the inevitable and catastrophic changes.

(İ 2002 Eugene Marks)