Last week the Washington Post published In Bush's Final Year, The Agenda Gets Greener, saying that Bush has changed his mind about global warming: "He has found the science increasingly persuasive and believes more needs to be done, especially after a set of secret briefings last winter."
The article quotes approving statements from Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a nuclear advocate, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), a coal advocate, and Environmental Defense head Fred Krupp, a corporate advocate.
Here's the real green legacy:
Bush's green agenda: burn the planet faster.
Bush's true legacy will be a Darwin Award for trying to drive our species to extinction.
U.S. goverment scientists are saying:
- "The Arctic is screaming"
- "The canary has died"
- "the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012."
There are a few people with a genuinely green agenda, and there's reason for hope.
Bill McKibben calls for immediately trying to reverse CO2 increases to return to 350 PPM from the 380+ we're at now:
"The news this fall that Arctic sea ice was melting at an off-the-charts pace and data from Greenland suggesting that its giant ice sheet was starting to slide into the ocean make even 450 [ppm CO2] look too high."
Jared Diamond actually strikes an optimistic note about reducing our levels of reckless consumption:
"Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe's standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans' wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures."