White House politics contributing to global warming

By KARIN RONNOW, Chronicle Columnist

Ah, the end of summer looms. I even slept for one night this weekend without the roar of the fan. Perhaps, fingers crossed, the unrelenting, record-breaking 90-plus-degree heat is nearing an end.

It's hard not to believe in global warming after a summer like this. Something is going on with the weather.

The persistent high temperatures plaguing Montana are atypical, just ask anyone who's lived here for more than 20 years. Oh, it gets hot here, but not usually for weeks on end.

Even the Europeans got a dose of the blistering heat. But while Americans have cultivated some heat-relieving customs - air conditioning, iced drinks, really cold beer - to see us through the worst of it, Europeans still look down their noses at such indulgences.

"An ingrained aversion to chilly drafts, an apparent tolerance for perspiration and an unwillingness to spend money to modernize have prevailed for years" in Europe, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Well, they paid the price. And the way things are going, they may soon be singing a different tune.

The World Meteorological Organization warned this summer that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. The 1990s was probably the warmest decade on record in most folks' memories - and it's getting hotter. Europe, parts of Africa and the American West are suffering from droughts, with rivers drying up, withering crops and wildfires.

"While no one can ascribe a single weather event to climate change with any degree of scientific certainty, higher maximum temperatures are one of the most predictable impacts of accelerated global warming," Sir John Houghton wrote in the Guardian, a British newspaper, this summer.

Ah, "global warming." That's where politics enters the fray.

Although it seems clear to many that Earth is suffering the effects of protracted human activity, the reigning U.S. political leaders refuse to concede that man-made pollutants are to blame.

Instead, President Bush and his advisers say the science isn't clear. They want more exact ways ways of measuring the effects of fossil-fuel burning and industrial pollution - the so-called "greenhouse gases" - before taking action.

With that justification, Bush renounced the Kyoto treaty on global warming (a decision made, curiously, at the same time Vice President Cheney was holding secret meetings with oil and gas executives), and recently ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to remove scientific information about the dangers of global warming from a public report.

Bush is glued to the argument that the science is far from settled, that blaming greenhouse gases for climate change, while ignoring other possibilities, is wrong.

That approach is equivalent to "fiddling while Rome burns," Phillip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said recently.

So, where's the happy medium? Why not make a concerted effort to lessen the United States' contribution to global warming until the "proof" is delivered?

The reason is money. It's got to be. Bush's biggest supporters are industry and corporate executives who have a vested interest in leaving things just as they are. Investment in alternatives and solutions is costly, so leave it for the next generation to deal with.

What kind of leadership is that?

There is a price to pay for the blistering hot summers, the dried-up crops, the burning of our national parks and forests, the smoke-filled mountain valleys and the evaporation of our rivers - just ask anyone who lives here.

But Bush is like an ostrich with its head in the sand. And for his political irresponsibility, his corporate supporters may realize short-term gains, but our children will be the ones suffering the long-term losses.

And you thought this summer was bad.

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