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The Saudi Gazette, Saudi Arabia

Bush's 'Shameful Stance' in Bali

"Of course, Bush was bought and paid for by the time he was elected President in 2000 … when it comes to the Bush Administration, the word 'moral' is one that doesn't exist in its vocabulary."

EDITORIAL

December 14, 2007

Saudi Arabia - The Saudi Gazzette - Home Page (English)

The United States has the world's largest economy, the world's mightiest military and the world's largest media machine. It is also the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And now, it's the world's greatest impediment to reaching agreements on stemming the increasingly frightening decline of the world's environment.

Reports coming out of the U.N. climate conference in Bali are disturbing, to say the least WATCH . Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, fresh from his visit to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize for his work on the environment, stated categorically in a speech delivered to delegates that, "My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali WATCH ."

And the European Union is threatening to pull out of U.S.- sponsored climate change talks unless the Bush Administration agrees to specific emissions targets, something it currently refuses to do. Such targets, the Bush minions say, would necessarily limit the scope of future talks and, incidentally, wreak havoc on the U.S. economy.

Of course, Bush was bought and paid for by the time he was elected President in 2000, and the secret meeting his Vice President, Dick Cheney, held with U.S. energy moguls at the start of the Bush presidency was further proof that profits - not the health of the planet - are the main focus of this administration.

The Bush Administration has been clueless on virtually every issue the country and the wider world have faced over the past seven years. From Iraq to stem cell research to health care to the environment, George Bush has shown the sensitivity and insight that only a person who has lived his life in affluent isolation could. In other words, he has the capacity for neither.

The problem here is that personal wealth will do little to save anyone from what could be a true environmental disaster lurking just around the corner.

And while it is true, as the U.S. maintains, that major polluters India and China must also join in the effort to slow global warming by limiting greenhouse gas emissions, it should be the United States, that greatest of all industrialized nations that has led the world in so many fields, that takes the lead.

Having lost all of its moral authority since the wholly unjustifiable invasion of Iraq and the denial of the very principles that once made it a great nation, America now has a chance to reassert its moral authority by taking the lead in protecting the environment.

However, when it comes to the Bush Administration, the word "moral" is one that doesn't exist in its vocabulary.