EPA REPORTS PUT BUSH IN HOT SEAT

Philadelphia Inquirer: President Bush is in the hot seat again over global warming.
A report unveiled quietly last week on the Environmental Protection Agency Web site concluded that global warming is real and largely caused by man-made pollution. The United States is likely to face serious climatic changes in the next few decades, such as heat waves, disruption in water supply and disappearance of meadows and barrier islands.
It's about time the Bush administration caught up with mainstream scientists, who long ago connected the dots between auto, refinery and power-plant emissions, and global temperature changes.
But Bush quickly disavowed the report. He almost had to. It doesn't jibe with his industry-friendly energy and clean-air proposals. Its findings could question his withdrawal from international climate negotiations or his reneging on a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide at power plants.
"I read the report put out by the bureaucracy," sneered Bush, who still portrays himself as a Washington outsider.
Washington insider
As president, however, he's the ultimate Washington insider, responsible for translating bureaucratic study into action. Sometimes, he does that eagerly, as in new security proposals from the Justice Department. But he cannot expect the public to automatically trust one part of his bureaucracy while he derides another part.
Under pressure from industry, he has consistently distanced himself from environmental findings out of his own EPA, National Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Academy of Sciences.
For the health and safety of America, he should start trusting his own experts. In the case of global warming, he should work to become the international leader he promised last June he'd be.
America needs to rethink how it produces electricity, how it travels, how it manufactures, how it builds, and how it farms and manages forests. The ways and means exist to reduce gases causing climate change -- through Bush's preferred marketplace arena. The technology is only going to get better.
Compelled by the science to act, companies such as DuPont, Shell, Alcoa and Intel are leading the way by ramping up clean energy sources and improving efficiency. They hope to serve as practical case studies for the regulation they see as inevitable. Massachusetts, Oregon and New Jersey are moving on the state level with targeted emissions reductions.
Purely voluntary measures, advocated strongly by the president, aren't enough. The federal government needs to set reduction goals, provide incentives to comply, and monitor progress. Only that will jumpstart market innovations.
America shouldn't just wait and see whether ecosystems unravel and then try to adapt, as the timid EPA suggests. This new report proves once again the United States should get serious about the real risk of devastating changes that lie ahead.