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July 25, 2004
Why aren't they telling this story?
Posted by McQ
Reading through this week's issue of Business Week, I came across this letter to the magazine in the Readers Report section:
"Stealing a march on the EPA" (Editorials, July 12) falsely asserts that climate change is not a high priority for the Bush Administration. In fact, the U.S. currently spends more money ($2 billion annually) on studying the causes and effects of climate change than Japan and the European Union combined. The Bush Administration was the first to deliver a strategic plan as part of its Climate Change Science Program -- which brought together 13 federal agencies, more than 1,200 scientists and stakeholders, and 35 countries around the world -- even though Congress required such a plan in 1990.
Implementing policies designed to curb "global warming" has dramatic consequences for businesses large and small and on the economy in general, but to what effect? Quite simply, we don't know enough about climate change to understand what effect policies would have on the global environment. That is why President Bush's comprehensive plan to first fill in the gaps in climate-change knowledge, along with accelerating federal investments in advanced energy technologies such as the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, is the most prudent course to take.
Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr.
Vice-Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Under Secretary of Commerce
for Oceans & Atmosphere
Washington
If this is all true, why in the world aren't the Republicans out there telling this story to anyone who'll listen?
Again we're spending more on studying climate change than both Japan and all of Europe combined?
Why didn't I know that before now?
The Bush administration has put the first strategic plan as part of its Climate Change Science Program as required by Congress in 1990? But I thought the Clinton administration was the big environmental administration. They never put a plan together in their entire 8 years? Bush is the first? Why didn't I know this before now?
And why did I have to dig it out of a letter to the editor of a business magazine?
The Republicans are going to have to do a whole lot better than this if they plan to get their story out before November.
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