Tuesday June 24, 2003 at 4:24 PM
Denial of Consequences
Appearing in Politics
As reported last week by the NY Times, the Bush administration has again refused to admit the overwhelming scientific evidence confirming that our planet’s climate is quickly heating up. Even if the trend partly results from the natural ebb and flow of global temperatures, to refute that human activity is not exacerbating and accelerating the trend is to engage in a form of denial that is somewhere between irresponsible and idiotic. Unfortunately, such a policy is all too consistent with the President’s general position on a whole host of issues. Global warming, federal deficits, tax cuts that widen the gulf between rich and poor, a unilateral foreign policy, the encouragement of fuel consumption, the narrowing of civil rights, the denial of legal status to prisoners of war, and the failure to even acknowledge Iraqi and Afghan civilian casualties are but some of the more obvious examples. It is as if they are constitutionally incapable of recognizing that these actions have consequences.
Clearly this administration believes that the job of government is to protect and support the American way of life — whatever that is — and that’s exactly what they’re doing, regardless of how that way of life may effect the world’s environment, global equality and stability, domestic peace, or even individual health. Bush’s goal is simply to insulate the American populace from the consequences of destructive and unsustainable patterns of consumption and waste no matter what the cost.
Unfortunately, you can’t really blame him given that we live in a democracy and surely any real attempt to curtail American over-consumption, or even admit that it’s destructive, will quickly lead to a loss of office. Still, it can hardly be considered wise leadership, when a government refuses to use the information it possess — scientific, political, and social — to at least inform its citizens of what is likely to result from their current trajectory.
