Global Warming: Bush Deals the World a Death Sentence

On February 16, 2005, the international Kyoto Protocol to curb global warming went into effect with no support from the Bush administration. This should be an embarrassment to all Americans.

Environmental attorney and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has described George W. Bush as the worst environmental president in U.S. history. During Bush's first term in office, his administration initiated more than 200 rollbacks of environmental laws. These moves serve to benefit big corporations, which are no longer inconvenienced by having to comply with strict pollution control standards. This kind of environmental irresponsibility is contributing to increased global warming which, if allowed to continue unchecked, could pose a serious threat to human life around the world.

Despite the ongoing assertions of some diehard naysayers, hard data are now confirming that climate change is dramatic, real and driven by fossil fuel burning. Weather patterns are increasingly unstable, deep oceans are warming, glaciers are melting, drought and famine are proliferating, sea levels are rising and the timing of the seasons themselves is altered.

Increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have resulted in a one-degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature over the last century. That may not seem like much of a warming effect, but the process is speeding up in a big way, and could soon careen out of control if measures are not taken to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the average global temperature will rise from three to 10 degrees Fahrenheit later in this century. Other studies suggest an even greater warming effect much sooner. The consequences could be cataclysmic.