When the history books are written about the early 21st century, and George W. Bush's name is mentioned, what will he be remembered for? Will it be for his huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans? His demolition of the budget, turning it from huge surpluses to even huger deficits? The Iraq War debacle? Corruption and cronyism, which reached its abject nadir in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? My guess is that he will be remembered - and not fondly! - for all these things, when Bush goes down in the history books as the Worst President Ever. But my guess is that all these disasters will pale alongside another one: the destruction of the late, great planet Earth. As the New York Times puts it in its lead editorial today, entitled, "America's Shame in Montreal:"
The best that can be said of the recently concluded meeting on climate change in Montreal is that the countries that care about global warming did not allow the United States delegation to blow the whole conference to smithereens. Washington was intent on making sure that the conferees required no more of the United States than what it is already doing to restrain greenhouse gas emissions, which amounts to virtually nothing.[...]
For its part, the Bush administration deserves only censure....given the steadily mounting evidence of the present and potential consequences of climate change - disappearing glaciers, melting Arctic ice caps, dying coral reefs, threatened coastlines, increasingly violent hurricanes - one would surely have expected America's negotiators to arrive in Montreal willing to discuss alternatives.
They did not. Instead, the principal negotiators, Paula Dobriansky and Harlan Watson, continued to tout the benefits of an approach that combines voluntary reductions by individual companies with further research into "breakthrough" technologies.
That will not work.
Almost literally, what we have here is the Bush Administration fiddling while the Earth burns up. And that is nothing short of criminal, no less so than misleading the country into the Iraq War or trashing our fiscal future.
The Times concludes:
The battle against global warming will never be won unless America joins it, urgently and enthusiastically. Our grandchildren will look back with anger and astonishment if we fail to do so.
Not to mention those historians 100 years from now, as they assess the Bush Presidency and early-21st Century "Conservatism," both of which played major roles in the demise of the late great Planet Earth.