Earl Blumenauer: “last week President Bush met with European leaders to discuss, along with other important policy issues, his dismissal…”

“last week President Bush met with European leaders to discuss, along with other important policy issues, his dismissal of the Kyoto Protocol and the administration's minimization of global climate change. I personally find it interesting that while the President feels we need to hold off taking action on global warming and instead need to study it more, at the same time he was discussing with our European allies his willingness to advance a national missile defense system that is unproven, expensive, and diplomatically unpopular with less likelihood of destruction, frankly, than what we face with global climate change. Three thousand international scientists and the National Academy of Science have all agreed: global warming is real and we are beginning to see the impacts in the rise of extreme weather episodes that have struck the United States in the past few years. Indeed, it was ironic that at the time the President was minimizing global climate change and heading off to Europe, his home State of Texas was visited by Tropical Storm Allison that hit with brutal ferocity. It killed 22 people in Houston. It rained 3 feet in less than a week, most of it in a single 24-hour period, an unprecedented flood, some would suggest. Damages were estimated at $2 billion in Houston alone, and 28 counties were declared Federal disaster areas.”