It's official, global warming does exist, says Bush

In an extraordinarily secretive manoeuvre, the Bush administration has subtly altered its position on global warming, officially admitting that there is a crisis while still declining to offer policies to combat it.

A government report to the UN says that global warming exists, that it is man-made, and that it will transform the environment - all points that the current US government, while never actually denying, has been reluctant to accept.

However, the report suggests that the country will have to accept the changes, rather than take any action to try to avert them.

"Adapting to a changing climate is inevitable," it says. "The question is whether we adapt poorly or well."
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Stop digging
What they know and why they're not going to do a damn thing
by Molly Ivins

According to The New York Times, the United States has reported to the United Nations that that global warming will substantially alter our climate in the next few decades, but the report "recommends adapting to inevitable changes. It does not recommend making rapid reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming, the approach favored by many environmental groups and countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty written in the Clinton administration that was rejected by Mr. Bush." For the first time, the Bush administration acknowledges that global warming is mostly caused by humans burning fossil fuels, but it proposes to do exactly nothing about it.

"Adapt to the inevitable changes"? The changes are not inevitable. The changes, according to scientists, can be mitigated, the effects ameliorated and at the very least we can stop aggravating the potential catastrophe. The First Rule of Holes is that when you are in one, you should stop digging. To keep right on doing what is already causing disastrous consequences is either insane or profoundly stupid.
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