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THE PENTAGON SOUNDS THE ALARM ON GLOBAL WARMING; WHY ISN'T PRESIDENT
BUSH LISTENING?

By Arianna Huffington

If he's smart enough to use it, the Democratic nominee may have just been
handed the perfect cudgel with which to pummel President Bush - and
cripple Karl
Rove's attempts to position his man as America's go-to guy on national
security.

The weapon in question is a new report on the grave and gathering threat
posed by global climate change - and the potentially cataclysmic
consequences of
the Bush administration's obstinately ignorant approach to global warming.

And the thing that makes the report so frightening - and the prospective
bludgeon so crushing - is that it wasn't authored by some crunchy granola think
tank or a band of tree-hugging EarthFirsters, but by the U.S. Department of
Defense.

That's right, the Pentagon - Rummy's playpen. In fact, the report, which was
slipped to the press earlier this month after being kept under wraps by the
White House for four months, was commissioned by Andrew Marshall, a legendary
DOD figure, nicknamed "Yoda" for his sagacity. As head of the Pentagon's
secretive Office of Net Assessment, Marshall has offered national security
assessments to every president since Richard Nixon.

And this latest assessment pegs climate change as a far greater danger than
even the scourge of international terrorism.

Dryly entitled "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for
United States National Security," the report reads like the plot summary of the
upcoming Dennis Quaid doomsday flick, "The Day After Tomorrow," in which
global warming pushes the planet to the edge of anarchy and annihilation.

But this scenario is not science fiction. According to the Pentagon study,
the question is not if abrupt climate change will happen, but when.
It could be,
according to the report's authors, as soon as the next three years, with the
most devastating fallout potentially occurring between 2010 and 2020.

At that point, we could find ourselves in the midst of a new ice age in which
mega droughts devastate the world's food supply, drinkable water becomes a
luxury worth going nuclear over, 400 million people are forced to migrate from
uninhabitable areas, and riots and wars for survival become commonplace.

I believe that would qualify as a Red Alert in Tom Ridge's color-coded book.

But the Bush White House remains unwilling to address - or even acknowledge -
this looming peril. Instead, the oiligarchs in the administration continue to
fiddle while the atmosphere starts to burn, routinely ignoring scientific
evidence and international consensus, and casting a questioning eye on the very
idea, let alone the fact, of global warming. It's a stance that has warmed the
hearts - globally, no doubt - of the Bush Pioneers and Rangers in the oil and
energy industry, making them feel very generous indeed.

As last week's release of a scathing letter signed by 60 prominent scientists
- including 20 Nobel laureates and former science advisers to both Republican
and Democratic administrations - makes clear, the Bush administration has
made an art out of ignoring science. Particularly when it comes to the issue of
global warming.

Who can forget the president's famous CO2 flip-flop, or the way the White
House tried to force so many changes to a section of an EPA report dealing with
climate change that Christie Todd Whitman finally threw up her hands and
decided to eliminate the section on global warming altogether?

But blinding the voters with pseudo-science may no longer be an option now
that the Pentagon report threatens to put the issue front and center - and
reframe it as a key component of our national security debate.

This is particularly good news for John Kerry, should he prevail, given his
long history of leading the charge in the Senate to cut down on greenhouse
gases by raising fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. The
president, of
course, has done just the opposite, giving Kyoto the kiss-off, and pushing
through unconscionable loopholes that reward gas-guzzling monster
SUVs and allow
carmakers to effectively reduce fuel economy for millions of the vehicles they
sell.

One of the defining traits of leadership is the ability to see not just the
crisis right in front of you, but the one lurking around the next corner.
Bush's steadfast refusal to act upon the potential desolation that
awaits us if we
do nothing to confront global warming makes him a major national security
liability.

Everyone in the Bush administration acted shocked and surprised when 9/11
happened - even though there had been red flags aplenty warning of al-Qaida's
evil intentions. Well, let there be no surprise this time. We have all been
warned.

While the Pentagon is sounding the alarm on an environmental Armageddon, the
president is covering his eyes, crossing his fingers, and whistling about the
"national importance" of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

The Democratic nominee needs to remind the White House - and the American
people: It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.  DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
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Anita H. Makuluni * Madison WI * [log in to unmask]

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