NIXONIAN :

Bush Administration Blames Humans for Global Warming (Tom Doggett and Chris Baltimore, June 3, 2002, Reuters)

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time in a new report that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will increase significantly over the next two decades due mostly to human activities, but again rejected an international treaty to slow global warming.

The report released by the Environmental Protection Agency was a surprising endorsement of what many scientists and weather experts have long argued -- that human activities such as oil refining, power plants and automobile emissions are important causes of global warming. [...]

Environmental groups said the new U.S. report was a major reversal by Bush administration on the link between global warming and human activity.

"(The report) undercuts everything the president has said about global warming since he took office," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. [...]

The administration repeated in the report that voluntary measures to control emissions taken by polluting U.S. companies are the best way to slow the growth of emissions that are believed to cause the earth's atmosphere and oceans to warm.

Thirty years ago, Richard Nixon, a liberal disguising himself as a conservative, told civil rights groups to watch what his administration did, not what it said. He then proceeded to enforce school busing rulings and to expand the social welfare state, while all the while talking like a redneck. But liberals couldn't process Mr. Nixon's message so they deposed him.

Today we have a conservative president disguised as a moderate (or a "compassionate" conservative) and some conservatives seem determined to make the same mistake with him that liberals made with Nixon. Who the hell cares what the administration says about global warming and its sources as long as they refuse to join the Kyoto accords? The environmentalists are running around declaring victory after the administration announced it was still rejecting the global warming treaty--are conservatives just as incapable of distinguishing actions from words? Man, we really are the "stupid party", huh?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2002 3:46 PM