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Contributors
Steven Hayward- Contributor
[Courtesty of Pacific Research
Institute]
Dr. Steven
Hayward is Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies for the Pacific
Research Institute. He
is also nationally recognized for his recently released book, The
Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order 1964-1980 (Prima
Publishing, 2001), and Churchill on Leadership: Executive
Success in the Face of Adversity (Prima Publishing, 1997).
[go to Hayward index]
 Tuning
Out Environmental Gore
Cold days for global warming...
[Steven Hayward] 1/30/04
Washington
is besieged with snow and ice again this week, which means
it is time for another meditation on-wait
for it-global warming! Of course, I have a tough act to follow,
given the perfect comic timing of former Vice President Al Gore,
who recently chose the coldest day in the northeast in the last
15 years to make a speech about global warming. Big Al was funnier
still: he made the speech to MoveOn.org. If ever there was one
subject about which the left won't ever "move on," it
is global warming.
Earth to Gore: No one is listening.
To the amazement of
environmentalists and the media, President Bush's approval
ratings on his handling of the environment have
stayed near or even above 50 percent throughout his presidency,
despite the mountain of adverse headlines in the media, the nonstop
fury of the political environmental groups, and the huge generic
party advantage Democrats have over Republicans as the party
best able to protect the environment. At no point in Bush's presidency
have his "disapprove" ratings on his handling of the
environment trailed his approval ratings.
The most recent Newsweek poll found 44 percent approving Bush
on the environment, with 40 percent disapproving and the rest
undecided. This is exactly where his ratings stood when he took
office three years ago. In fact, Bush's environmental poll numbers
are very close to President Bill Clinton's poll numbers for the
comparable point in his first term, which must drive Gore out
of his mind.
Gore complains that "The
problem is that our world is now confronting a five-alarm fire
that calls for bold moral and political
leadership from the United States of America. With such leadership,
there is no doubt that we could solve the problem of global warming.
After all, we brought down communism, won wars in the Pacific
and Europe simultaneously, enacted the Marshall Plan, found a
cure for polio, and put men on the moon."
The trouble is that the Clinton administration itself estimated
that the cost of the Kyoto Protocol to the American economy for
just one year would be more than twice the total cost of the
moon project and the Marshall plan put together. This is the
reason President Clinton did not submit the Kyoto Protocol to
the Senate for ratification, or lift a finger to implement it.
This is why in 1998
the National Environmental Trust blasted the Clinton administration
for its "intransigence," for "abandoning
the core principles of the [Kyoto] global warming treaty" and
for "abandoning any pretence of living up to its rhetoric
about cutting global warming pollution."
And in a speech in
April 2002 Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Global Climate
Change, one of the leading advocacy groups
for urgent action on the issue, had harsh words for the Clinton
administration: "Finally, I'd like to offer a special posthumous
award to the Clinton administration. For talking big about climate
change on the international stage but doing next to nothing about
it at home, I present the Clinton White House with the award
for best costumes."
Gore and MoveOn.org are hoping that everyone will forget this
inconvenient fact about the Clinton-Gore record.
copyright
2004 Pacific Research Institute
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