  | | Global Warming - Two Wrongs Making a Right? | 06/06/2007 12:48:51 pm by Dan Krohn | |  |
| In an earlier entry, this blog addressed the issue of two wrongs not making a right. At least that’s what this blogger’s mother instructed repeatedly. So it cannot help but concern when a world leader espouses that a wrong cannot be addressed until everyone involved addresses it together.
As another axiom for living, a book this blogger read some considerable time ago made an interesting point: “If you choose to believe what someone says rather than what that person does, then you are choosing to lie to yourself.”
So where are we now on the issue of global warming? This blog entry will not address the science on that issue. What needs to be addressed is the approach being taken by the U.S. administration. President Bush has now come out and stated clearly that global warming is a concern which must be addressed. That’s what he now says. But if we look to what he does, Bush has opposed pollution controls at every opportunity. This is consistent with his pattern of favoring short term profits for large corporations over other interests. Given his record of action, it is really difficult to believe this administration when it states that there is a pollution based problem that should be addressed. Today, this blogger chooses not to lie to himself
But the more irritating position of the Bush administration is its insistence that we cannot address the problem (a problem which Bush has stated needs to be addressed) until every nation involved meets and agrees. So presumably if every nation save one agrees on certain measures to address the global warming issue, those measures ought not be implemented because there is a lack of unanimity. In essence, the Bush administration is taking the position that it is right to continue committing a wrong so long as anyone else is committing the same wrong. Hooey! If the scientists who maintain that the human contribution to global warming is a primary source of the problem are correct, and if they are ignored - the price our children will pay for ignoring them will be exceedingly high. Bush is simply creating a position that will result in the issue’s not being addressed - ever.
This position is all the more remarkable when one considers the Bush administration’s position on other issues of international nature. Certainly in Iraq, for example, we did not take the position that nothing could be done until all nations were in agreement. Heck, we did not even wait for a solid industrial west to have a position. So this insistence on including all seems peculiar to this global warming issue, and it is clearly a position spoken with a forked tongue.
Now in fairness to Bush, there is one aspect of the issue which needs to be addressed. A group of nations cannot be expected to willingly take a big economic hit by dealing with the global warming issue, while allowing other nations a short term economic advantage arising from savings from not implementing antipollution measures. But if there is really an important problem to be addressed with global warming, there are ways to deal with nations which do not contribute to the solution other than simply joining them in polluting. Policies are routinely addressed through tariffs and other economic sanctions. The nations working on the problem can simply agree not to buy from the nations which will not join in. No doubt there are other ways to address this as well.
So alas, even this argument for not seriously discussing the issue won’t fly. Bush simply is not concerned with limiting pollutants which cause global warming (or pollutants which cause any other kind of damage for that matter) when those limits could lessen the short term profits which drive his policies.
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