Global Warming and the Republican Filibuster

The oil companies and other big businesses that have virtual control of our government must be dismayed now that the government’s own agencies have reported about the existence, causes, and danger of global warming. On May 30, 2008, after deliberately delaying publication for three years, and only after he was ordered to do so by the court, President Bush grudgingly released a report by the Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).

The NSTC report states that there is growing danger from global warming and that human-driven climate change will damage ecosystems and pose challenges to key sectors of the U.S. economy, including agriculture and energy. The report adds that because of greenhouse gas emissions, the “evidence suggests a substantial human contribution to recent hurricane activity.”

On May 27, 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report demonstrating that global warming has already had dire consequences for farming, forestry, and water. The report points to future serious consequences of global warming due to Bush’s inactivity over the past eight years, saying: “Much of this change will be caused by greenhouse gas emissions that have already happened.”

By law, the Bush Administration was required to publish a national assessment on climate change every four years. Until this year, the Administration has refused to do so. The reason is obvious. The reports contradict the Administration’s position that there was no such thing as global warming, or that even if there was global warming, it was not caused by the release of greenhouse gasses.

This is not the only instance in which the Bush Administration has tried to block release of scientific evidence of global warming. Recently, the Inspector General of NASA criticized the activities of Bush Administration appointees for distorting and suppressing NASA’s climate science findings.

The evidence that there is global warming and that it is being caused by human emissions of greenhouse gasses is no longer in any doubt. Exxon Mobile has financed studies relied upon by the Republicans in Congress to argue against climate change science, but it is no longer acceptable or honorable for politicians to rely on these dubious reports by paid flunkies of the oil industry.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN sponsored organization made up of leading scientists from all over the world, issued a report stating that: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea levels.” The report found that the increase in global warming was most likely caused by human emission of greenhouse gasses.

In May, 2008, 1,700 of America’s most prominent scientists and economists, including six Nobel Prize winners, issued a joint statement calling on policymakers to require immediate reductions of at least 80 percent in the heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming. The statement warns of the growing risks of continued global warming, including: rising sea levels, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, snowmelt, floods, disease, and extinctions of plant and animal species.

The opposition to this enormous array of scientific evidence is not other scientific evidence, but a campaign of lying and misinformation by oil companies and other fossil fuel producers. Their motivation is obvious. The cost of reducing greenhouse gasses would cut into their profits.

This past week the Senate debated S. 3036, a bill that would require the reduction of carbon emissions by 70 percent by mid-century. On June 6, 2008, Senate Republicans blocked the bill. Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to invoke cloture and end a Republican filibuster against the bill.

President Bush and the Republican leaders opposed the bill ostensibly on the grounds that it would harm the economy. What are they thinking? Can’t they read? Don’t they realize, as the NSTC and the USDA reports demonstrate, that continued global warming will crush our economy? They are subordinating the future of our economy, our environment, and our planet to transient political considerations. We are on a train thundering toward disaster. The warning sirens are ringing. It’s time to wake up!