That is a description of the Bush White House. The context is global warming. The author is Derrick Jackson, from his bi-weekly Boston Globe column, today entitled Hesitance on the warming front.
The context is the recent cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, which he calls
a preview for the rise in sea levels in the years ahead.
The timing of the typhoon coincided with the release of the recent environmental report:
Predicting that global warming will result in a likely increase in tropical cyclone activity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said, "Coastal areas, especially in heavy populated megadelta regions in South, East and Southeast Asia will be at greatest risk due to increased flooding from the sea. . . . Endemic morbidity and mortality due to diarrheal disease primarily associated with floods and droughts are expected to rise."
(more)
The U. S. opposed the IPCC report. As Jackson writes
On the UN report, the United States fought behind the scenes to - pun intended - water it down.
And yet how has the rest of the world been reacting?
Jackson notes that the European Union has moved towards quotas on carbon dioxide emissions from airliners, arguing also for a worldwide system as soon as possible, about which the U.S. complained that this was a violation of the idea of addressing the issue by mutual agreement. Of course, as Jackson also notes, this is from a nation whose invasion of Iraq certainly was not by mutual agreement or as Jackson writes
the same nation that waged unilateral war on Iraq complained that the European Union's action is unilateral.
The op ed details the possible horrors awaiting the world if the IPCC analysis is correct, and we are already seeing evidence that it understates the risk. On this Jackson quotes Gernot Klepper of the Kiel Institute for World Economy in Germany:
"The world is already at or above the worst-case scenarios in terms of emissions. In terms of emissions, we are moving past the most pessimistic estimates of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], and by some estimates we are above that red line."
There is an important meeting in Bali in December to address the crisis. The Secretary General of the UN has called upon the U.S. and China to take the lead on global warming as the challenge of the age. He warns about children needing protection from ultra violet radiation in the farther reaches of South America because of the destruction of the ozone layer, the Antarctic ice melting, Amazonian rain forest drying out and becoming like African savanna. Ban Ki-moon describes these scenes, sounding like a scary science fiction movie , as "more terrifying because they are real."
And the reaction of the Bush administration to these and other warnings of how horrible the situation already is?
Yet, when queried as to what level of global warming the White House found acceptable, senior environmental adviser James Connaughton said incredibly, "We don't have a view on that."
We don't have a view as to an acceptable level of global warming, when the evidence is now overwhelming that we face an imminent crisis, which if we do not address immediately will create irrevocable damage.
Fortunately the rest of this nation is not as ignorant nor stubborn as are those in the administration. Jackson notes the many state and regional efforts to attempt to address what the administration seeks to ignore, including bi-partisan regional agreements among governors such as Republicans Schwarzenegger of California and Huntsman of Utah and Democrat Governor Schweitzer of Montana who
are appearing in television ads for Environmental Defense, calling for global warming pollution caps.
Jackson offers a faint hope in his final paragraph, which since it is the source of my title, and of another line I almost used, both of which I will place in bold I thought I should share before I disagree:
Abroad, the Bangladeshes of the world are clamoring louder than ever for action. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said "What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future." It would be easy to assume that one of those two or three years will be wasted by Bush. But if Arnold "Hummer" Schwarzenegger can be moved on the environment, perhaps the White House has a tipping point toward sanity. In dire scenarios of climate change, many islands will be swamped. The White House is the last island of ignorance in a fast-rising sea.
I do not believe there is a tipping point for this White House. And I want to make an assertion, connecting their refusal to address the issue of global warming with something which also concerns us. Let me preface with several quotes from the Constitution.
First, from the Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
and then from the Presidential oath in Article VI:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
I do not believe that there can be domestic tranquility if our coastline is disappearing, if our coastal cities are being inundated, and absent tranquility the general welfare deteriorates. Further, the worldwide impact of global warming is going to create such international disruption that it will threaten our security, and thus strain the ability of the United States to feed itself, protect its access to necessary resources. Given how dispersed around the world Americans are, through business, travel and education as well as in our military installations in more than 170 nations, it will be impossible to fulfill the requirement of providing for the common defense in world torn apart by the changes created by global warming, changes such as the rapid melting of ice sheets which Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton notes in Jackson's column
would make it not just difficult, but impossible to adapt successfully" to climate change
If a President knows this is coming, if all the scientific evidence, conservatively evaluated by the best independent thinkers (that is, those not on the payroll of energy interests) agree and try to warn about the forthcoming danger, and the President refuses to act, then I believe that he is failing in his oath or affirmation to faithfully execute his office and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. To me this is a high crime and misdemeanor, or in other words, an impeachable offense.
No one would argue that a president who was informed of the possibility of imminent attack and refused to take the actions necessary to protect the "homeland" and the people of the United States would be subject to removal from office. The threat posed by the global warming crisis may be even greater than any military threat we have ever faced, including that of nuclear attack during the Cold War. After all, we could threaten the Soviet Union with equivalent or worse destruction than anything they could unleash upon us, and as thinking creatures their leaders might be dissuaded. But no threats will persuade the West Antarctic Ice Sheet not to break off into the sea. Nor can Bush be like Canute and order the sea not to rise. And if his answer is to punt the responsibility to possible successors (assuming we still believe that he willingly surrender power)that is no different than what Buchanan did, passing on the onrushing crisis between North and South to Lincoln, with the tragic consequences of the Civil War. That irresponsibility is a refusal to do the job to which he is sworn and for which we pay him.
There is one other alternative, which would be for his cabinet and the Vice President to act under the 25th Amendment and suspend him from acting in his presidential office on the grounds of demonstrated incapacity, but of course that will not happen. Thus we must address the reality that there is only one solution, and that is to move towards impeachment.
Our elected national legislators take an oath or affirmation to protect the United States against all enemies. These are described as foreign or domestic, and certainly global climate change is not something that was originally included in the understanding of those enemies. But it is as much - no, much more - of a threat to this nation and its people than any nation or group of terrorists can possibly represent. That requires the appropriate response.
While I doubt that the Congress will consider it such, I argue that the refusal to accept the scientific consensus on global climate change, and to be willing to start acting NOW to ameliorate the already disastrous impact and to make changes necessary to prevent it being irreversible fully meets the definition of an impeachable offense. I would like to see this argument made, if not by Dennis Kucinich, then by somebody. This is not a partisan issue: note the bipartisan nature of the efforts by governors. This is not just a national issue, as actions by other nations makes clear. And what is potentially really frightening is to understand that if our failure to act appropriately threatens their very existence and national survival, under international law those other nations would be entitled to take any and all actions against our nation.
We have a responsibility to act. WE MUST ACT NOW.
The Derrick Jackson column should be a wakeup call. That is if the many alarums, from Al Gore to IPCC to the many others have not already shocked us into a state of highly aroused consciousness.
I want to be hopeful, but an administration which does not immediately fire an official environmental adviser whose response to a question on acceptable levels of global warming is "We don't have a view on that" is a threat to this nation - and to the world - and it is the responsibility of all of us to demand whatever action the Constitution authorizes to protect ourselves and the rest of the world.
Ignorance or willful blindness is no longer acceptable. If the administration will not act on this subject, then it should be terminated by impeachment.
Peace.