01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 16, 2005
BERKELEY, Calif.
AFTER HURRICANE Katrina, much was made of President Bush's tentative, stumbling reaction. In comparison with 9/11, when the president grabbed the bullhorn and won the nation's approval, Bush's Katrina response had a deer-in-the-headlights quality.
Even more striking has been his policy response to the natural disaster. This offers a disturbing insight into how the Bush administration applies one standard of risk assessment to the threats of terrorism, and quite another to the equally real threats of climate change -- global warming.
As we all remember, in the days after 9/11 it didn't take long for Bush to fixate on a specific enemy: Osama bin Laden and his not-so-merry band of Islamic fundamentalists had done this to us, and they would pay. And within weeks, the United States was on the offensive, relieving the al-Qaida-succoring Taliban of its brutal grip on Afghanistan.
Then, with bin Laden still on the loose and growing evidence that the Mideast was becoming a breeding ground for the kind of Islamic-fundamentalist anti-Americanism behind 9/11, President Bush and his advisers determined that to protect Americans from terrorism, the United States had to wage an open-ended struggle against Mideastern Islamo-fascism -- a goal that could take decades to accomplish.
Step one, of course, was the costly Iraq war, the first test of the controversial policy of "pre-emptive strike." Intelligence was admittedly murky, but Bush and his advisers insisted that there was reason to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and might use them on us. Sure, they said, we didn't know precisely how big a threat this was, but Bush was fond of reminding us of a lesson of 9/11: When you finally have all the evidence, it will always be too late. Better to act now, he said, on the best available information, than to risk more disastrous consequences later.
But now, in the wake of Katrina, and then Hurricane Rita, a very different long-term enemy has emerged. A growing number of people are asking a variant of the question recently posed by Time magazine: Are we making hurricanes worse? United Nations emergency-relief coordinator Jan Egeland has called the hurricanes a "wake-up call" on the dangers of global warming. Indeed, there appears to be solid evidence that the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes is increasing (though not the frequency). One likely cause is the rise in surface sea temperature, although there is also evidence that the growing intensity is just part of natural storm cycles.
The problem is that until recently, satellite data were not particularly good, so it's hard to assemble accurate long-term data. But less in doubt is that climate change is real and man-made; on this, near unanimity exists within the international scientific community.
What also seems clear is that, regardless of whether Katrina was caused by climate change, major climate disaster is coming soon to major cities (think Manhattan under water) unless action is taken now to reduce carbon emissions.
Nevertheless, even as President Bush has called for a "generational commitment" to building democracy in the Mideast, there's been nary a peep from the administration -- even after Katrina -- about waging a war on climate change.
Instead of going on the offensive against the possible forces behind this latest form of devastation, President Bush responded with a cowboy promise to rebuild New Orleans -- "higher and better" than before -- and a National Day of Prayer, on which he essentially told the nation that Katrina is part of God's plan: "Through prayer we look for ways to understand the arbitrary harm left by this storm, and the mystery of undeserved suffering. And in our search we're reminded that God's purposes are sometimes impossible to know here on Earth."
Even the presidential call to drive less and use public transit more made no mention of climate change.
Alhough no one has expressed surprise, the disparate responses to the two forms of disaster should seem strange. When it comes to terrorism, Bush was willing to engage in a major military mission based on far-from-definite intelligence. But when it comes to climate change, Bush is unwilling to take any economic risks to forestall disaster. He now demands ironclad proof that the threat of climate change is real, man-made, and correctable before he commits himself even to cutting carbon emissions.
Just as the tragedy of 9/11 created an opportunity for the administration to talk about building democracy in the Mideast, Katrina has created an even clearer opportunity to talk about combating global warming.
As for the 9/11 lesson that one can be certain about a threat only after it's too late: Regarding climate change, President Bush ignores it -- at great peril to us all.
Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is the co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler).
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20051016_16drut.32a685d.html
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