http://enterprise.southofboston.com/articl...n/opinion01.txt

The Enterprise-Boston

Gore, Bush and global warming
No Author Given:
December 11,2007

Al Gore was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize Monday, an international recognition that he — along with the 2,500 scientists who have made up the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — has done more than anyone else to push the world toward solutions to global warming.

It went unspoken in Oslo, but it cannot go unnoticed that the man who snatched the White House away from Gore in 2000 must be considered the man who has done more than anyone else to keep the planet from responding to its most dire environmental threat: George W. Bush.

Within weeks of taking office, Bush cast aside a campaign promise to have the Environmental Protection Agency regulate carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas tied to global warming. In the six years since, his administration has done everything it could to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. Its energy policies have been tilted toward discovering and burning more fossil fuels, not less.

With no leadership out of Washington, states have taken environmental policy into their hands. Seventeen states have enacted legislation regulating emissions. Led by Massachusetts, they filed a federal suit challenging Bush's contention that the EPA lacked authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.

With the Senate preparing to vote on the energy bill this week, Bush is throwing obstacles in its way. Bush now threatens to veto the bill unless it includes language reversing the Supreme Court's decision on the EPA's role. In doing so, he appears determined to leave behind for the next president a weakened EPA, statutorily prevented from helping combat the most serious environmental threat.

Even lame ducks are capable of doing great damage on their way out the door, and this oil-fueled administration seems determined to serve its special interest friends to the last breath.

Congress must resist Bush's efforts at intimidation and enact the energy bill as is. Let Bush veto it and make Republicans take a stand on overriding that veto. America is years late in recognizing the threat of climate change and in freeing us from our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

This bill is far from revolutionary, but it's a start.