Bush's Global Warming Foot-Dragging

George W. Bush snared front-page attention for his supposed shift on global warming, but the President's tepid "aspirational goals" -- and comments from his NASA chief that a hotter planet might actually be beneficial -- continue to reflect Bush's long-held doubts about the urgency of the problem.

Since running for the presidency in 2000, Bush has justified his foot-dragging on the issue, in part, through reliance on coal-industry-financed research embracing the same notion expressed by Bush's NASA administrator Michael Griffin, that global warming may turn out to be a good thing.

For instance, in a major energy policy address on September 29, 2000, candidate Bush turned to research from the Greening Earth Society, a think tank financed by the Western Fuels Association, a cooperative owned by seven coal-burning utilities.

In the speech, Bush offered the surprising assessment that technological breakthroughs, such as the Internet, were draining the nation's electrical grid and required construction of many new power plants, including coal-fired generators.

"Today, the equipment needed to power the Internet consumes 8 percent of all the electricity produced in the United States," Bush declared, an assertion that drew little press attention but astounded many energy experts who consider the Internet and similar advances, on balance, a way to improve productivity and reduce energy demands.

But there was another level to Bush's Internet claim, a peculiar relationship between Bush and the Greening Earth Society, which produced the dubious data and endorses the view that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- and the global warming it would produce -- are good for the earth.

Bush's Internet energy figure could be traced to a 1999 study entitled "The Internet Begins with Coal," written by Mark Mills, president of Mills McCarthy & Associates Inc. Based on Mills's calculations, the study stated, "The electricity appetite of the equipment on the Internet has grown from essentially nothing 10 years ago to 8 percent of the total U.S. electricity consumption today."

Though Bush cited Mills's 8 percent figure as fact, the estimate was vigorously challenged by many energy experts who put the Internet's demand at only about 1 percent of U.S. electricity, even before considering energy savings from such altered habits as shoppers buying online.

According to a summary of Mills's report, his Internet project grew "out of an inquiry by Greening Earth Society president Fred Palmer." Mills also was listed as a scientific adviser to the Greening Earth Society.

Loving Carbon Dioxide

In a report entitled "The CO2 Issue," the Greening Earth Society painted a rosy picture of the global warming brought about by greenhouse gases: "Evidence of very modest nighttime winter warming, robust plant growth, rejuvenating forests and ample harvests abounds."

Greening Earth Society president Palmer also was chief executive of the Western Fuels Association, a cooperative which delivered 22.7 million tons of coal to member utilities in 1999, according to its annual report.

In its 2000 annual report, Western Fuels condemned the "anti-coal activities" of the Clinton-Gore administration. The report also criticized efforts to address the problem of global warming through the international agreement, reached in Kyoto, Japan, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

While the national press corps took little note of where the Republican presidential candidate was getting his data, environmentalists were alarmed because Bush seemed to be embracing the coal industry's propaganda.

Environmentalists consider coal a major polluter of the land, water and air -- as well as a principal source of greenhouse gas emissions. The Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Energy Department estimated that burning coal then released 36 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.