Global Intransigence
George Bush on global warming, according to The New York Times:

President George W. Bush has been running from the issue of global warming for four years, but the walls are closing in. Scientists throughout the world are telling him that the rise in atmospheric temperature justifies aggressive action. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and other prominent Republicans are telling him to get off the dime. His corporate allies are deserting him. And the Senate is inching closer to endorsing a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

A result is that Bush seems increasingly isolated and his rhetoric of denial increasingly irrational. Last week, a whistleblower asserted that a senior White House official, formerly an oil lobbyist, had changed scientific reports to minimize the climate problem. The official, Philip Cooney, resigned last Friday, although the White House insisted that the embarrassing disclosures had nothing to do with his departure. Whatever the truth, this was hardly the first time Bush officials cooked the books for political ends.

Out in the real world, hardly anyone denies the importance of the issue anymore. Just over a week ago, Schwarzenegger pledged to slow, stop and ultimately reverse California's greenhouse gas emissions by requiring big improvements in automobile efficiency and pushing for energy sources other than fossil fuels. "The debate is over," the governor said. "We know the science, we see the threat, and we know the time for action is now."

As if on cue, the National Academy of Sciences and 10 of its counterparts around the world declared that the science of global warming is clear enough to warrant prompt reductions in greenhouse gases. Mainstream scientists have long accepted the link between warming and human activity. What made this statement exceptional was its tone and its timing, coming a month before Bush and other leaders from the Group of 8 industrialized nations are to meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, where Prime Minister Tony Blair will put climate change near the top of the agenda.