Washington wakes up to global warming

NEW YORK – Maybe it’s the weird winter weather, or the newly Democratic Congress. Maybe it’s the news reports about starving polar bears, or the Oscar nomination for
Al Gore’s global warming cri de coeur, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Whatever the reason, years of resistance to the reality of climate change are suddenly melting away like the soon-to-be-history snows of Kilimanjaro.

Now even George W. Bush says it’s a problem.

For years, the president and his supporters argued that not enough was known about global warming to do anything about it. But during last week’s State of the Union address Bush finally referred to global warming as an established fact.

“These technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change,” Bush said in proposing a series of measures to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.

AP