At a forum in honor of the Environmental Protection Agency's 35th anniversary (yes, the EPA was established by Republican President Richard M. Nixon), former Republican EPA chiefs blasted the Bush Administration. Here are three of the "best" (actually, "worst" if you care about the planet) comments, showing how wildly wrong (scientifically, morally) and out of the mainstream the Bush Administration is on this issue:*Russell Train, EPA chief under Nixon and Gerald Ford: "We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it....To sit back and just push it away and say we'll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive."
*Lee Thomas, EPA chief under Ronald Reagan: "...if the United States doesn't deal with those kinds of issues in a leadership role, they're not going to get dealt with. So I'm very concerned about this country and this agency."
*Christie Todd Whitman, EPA chief under President Bush until she was completely undercut and essentially forced out the door by Dick Cheney and his anti-environment cronies: "You'd need to be in a hole somewhere to think that the amount of change that we have imposed on land, and the way we've handled deforestation, farming practices, development, and what we're putting into the air, isn't exacerbating what is probably a natural trend. But this is worse, and it's getting worse.''
Finally, the news stories note that "All of the former administrators and the current one, Stephen Johnson, raised their hands when the event moderator asked whether they believe global warming is a real problem and again when he asked if humans bear significant blame." In other words, the only people denying anthropogenic (man-made) global warming at this point are the coal and oil industries (and Big Oil isn't monolithic on this anymore), certain elements within the auto industry (mainly really stupid, poorly-run and reactionary companies like GM), the right wing of the Republican Party (some of whom actually rub their hands with glee at the possibility of Armageddon), and the Bush Administration's little (but powerful, unfortunately) anti-reality-based community.
The urgent question for today how are we going to reverse the global havoc to the earth's climate (think Hurricane Katrinas, melting polar ice caps, drowning polar bears), a problem that David Ignatius yesterday correctlycalled "the biggest story in our history... a human folly beyond imagining?" For starters, we've got to get rid of the corrupt, clueless, Cro Magnons in Congress. We can do that in November 2006. Then, we need a complete overhaul in 2008, with someone like Al Gore who "gets it" working this problem from the White House.
Finally, we need to change our own behavior at the local and state level. In Virginia, we can immediately move to adopt strict "California standards" for greenhouse gas emissions. We can do what many other states have done and mandate strong Renewable Portfolio Standards to mandate a rapid away from fossil fuels and towards wind, solar, biomass, and energy efficiency technologies. This problem may not SEEM urgent, but it IS urgent. We need to act immediately, not wait for our so-called "leaders" in Washington DC to solve the problem for us. Because they're not going to, at least not with the current crop of right-wing, anti-environment Republicans in charge.