Bush’s Painful Mix of Ignorance, Self-Interest

It’s true. Discretion is the better part of valor. So would someone please put President Bush on a plane and bring him home?

Sure, he gets a few points for giving it the old college try on his current European tour, in which hecklers have teed off on him at every stop. But we’re taking a beating back home, and it may be in America’s best interests to keep him locked inside the White House until further notice.

One sign in Brussels read:

Bush--Wanted for Crimes Against the Planet

They must think we’re all barbarians. We execute the retarded, we’ve got an energy policy from the Cro-Magnon administration, and we dismissed the international global warming treaty as a lot of hooey.

For good measure, we’re very excited about a missile defense shield, which will apparently consist of an impenetrable layer of greenhouse gas. Bush said Europeans wouldn’t be so worried about his Star Wars plan “when they hear the logic behind the rationale.”

This is not good PR for us. It almost makes you wish Vice President Cheney, who made millions in the energy business, had been there to help out. But he was hard at work on tax credits for coal-fired swimming pool heaters.

The other day, while trying to make sense of Bush’s explanation for trashing the Kyoto global warming treaty, I called a UCLA professor of atmospheric sciences. I figured that once I understood the logic behind the rationale, a light would go on.

Bush, whose Daddy got rich in the oil business, said we have a “responsibility to reduce our emissions,” but that the Kyoto agreement is based on inconclusive evidence and puts unattainable caps on greenhouse emissions. “No one knows what constitutes a dangerous level of warming,” he added.

There’s a lot that scientists don’t know about global warming, admits Michael Ghil, director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA.

They don’t know how much is attributable to natural causes, for instance. And there’s even disagreement, scientifically and politically, about Kyoto.

But from our fascination with gas-guzzling SUVs to industrial “slashing and burning and the belching of gases,” Ghil says it’s clear that man is cooking with the burners on high.

“Our knowledge isn’t perfect,” Ghil says, “but it’s sufficient to take action. It’s clear to me that we should cut our consumption of fossil fuels.”

Ghil says his career ambition is for the world to be able to control its climate by the end of this century. But we are not flying out of the blocks.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say Bush gets reelected, and then his brother Neil follows him into the White House, and then Neil gets reelected.

Forget climate control by the end of the century. We’ll be lucky if these guys don’t start drilling in the Rose Garden.

The question is how much of President Bush’s take on energy and environment is the result of fuzzy science and how much has to do with political self-interest?

An ever-expanding body of evidence suggests that his general know-nothingness, to some extent, is genuine. But then you see a story like the one Jerry Hirsch broke in Wednesday’s Times, and the obvious pattern of self-interest emerges.

As you know, several power companies have been accused by California officials of cooking the books on power shortages to drive up prices. Now we learn that while the infirm, the elderly and others suffer with criminally high utility bills and threats of blackouts, the grand pooh-bahs of these companies--many of whom are Bush cronies--are making out like thieves.

Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay took home an obscene $123 million in stock options last year in Texas--on top of his paycheck--and he’s pocketed another $23 million since November. Jeffrey K. Skilling, the No. 2 guy, cashed in $62 million in options last year.

We’ll be melted to the slipcovers this summer while these guys are walking around with snakeskin cowboy boots and enough money to buy Iceland. The energy crisis is a welfare program for Texas millionaires, and we’re the suckers.

It’s what Bush’s Daddy used to call the New World Order.

Karl Rove, Bush’s top advisor, has a six-figure interest in Enron.

Lay, who funneled hundreds of thousands to Bush’s campaign, is a friend of the president’s and advised him on appointments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

You can forget Kyoto, and you can forget conservation. The question isn’t why are Europeans marching in the streets? The question is why aren’t we?