President Bush recently expressed doubt [1] that he will be viewing Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.” In the course of this same interview (reported by the Associated Press), Mr. Bush also made two extraordinary statements:
1) “New technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment.”
In other words, Mr. Bush is claiming that the federal government doesn’t need to take an active role to protect the environment. Instead, the “Free Market” has again been praised as the Beneficent Intelligent Protector that it truly isn’t.
2) “And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the enviroment.”
This second comment is puzzling, indeed. What IF global warming is being caused by “mankind’s” burning of fossil fuels? If this proved to be the case, we could minimize the devastating consequences of global warming by minimizing “mankind’s” burning of fossil fuels [2]. Right? If we learned that fossil fuels were contibuting substantially to global warming, wouldn’t this be a good reason to make “technologies . . . that will protect the environment” a HUGE priority?
But coming to these conclusions just wouldn’t do, of course. Thinking such thoughts might encourage government leaders to restrict our wasteful conspicuous consumption of energy. We might have to drive reasonable-sized cars. We might have to consider energy consumption whenever we pass laws regarding urban planning, commerce or taxation. In this political climate, it would just be so horribly un-American to worry about energy!
By making this second statement, Mr. Bush has given us yet another clue regarding his faith-based world-view. He sees the issue of global warming solely as one of finger-pointing. It is beyond Mr. Bush’s understanding that anyone’s concern with global warming should be taken at face value. That’s why he sees no need to go see Al Gore’s movie.
Instead of recognizing global warming as a serious evidence-based issue, Mr. Bush has seized on the issue of global warming as another us-versus-them battle. Us versus them? That’s a movie I think I’ve seen before . . .
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