Reasons

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children of the Enlightenment, championed those ideals and took pains to create a Constitution that espoused

 

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religious freedom yet separated church and state. The United States, despite the occasional messianism of its leaders, isn’t a theocracy.

 

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In our time, the Bush administration’s hostility to scientific inquiry puts the world at risk. Environmental

 

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catastrophe, whether you think the world has been developing only since Genesis or for eons, is far too serious to

 

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ignore. In preparation for the G8 summit this past summer, the scientific academies of all G8 nations (including the US

 

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National Academy of Sciences), joined by those of China, India and Brazil, called on the leaders of the rich countries

 

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to take urgent action to head off global warming.

 

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"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify prompt action," their statement

 

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said. "It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and

 

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long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."

 

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In its lead editorial, The Financial Times endorsed this "clarion call," while observing: "There is, however, one

 

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holdout, and unfortunately it is to be found in the White House where George W. Bush insists we still do not know

 

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enough about this literally world-changing phenomenon."

 

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Dismissal of scientific evidence on matters of survival, in keeping with Bush’s scientific judgment, is routine. A few

 

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months earlier, at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, leading US

 

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climate researchers released "the most compelling evidence yet" that human activities are responsible for global

 

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warming, according to The Financial Times. They predicted major climatic effects, including severe reductions in

 

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water supplies in regions that rely on rivers fed by melting snow and glaciers.

 

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Other prominent researchers at the same session reported evidence that the melting of Arctic and Greenland ice

 

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sheets is causing changes in the sea’s salinity balance that threaten "to shut down the Ocean Conveyor Belt, which

 

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transfers heat from the tropics toward the polar regions through currents such as the Gulf Stream." Such changes

 

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might bring significant temperature reduction to northern Europe.

 

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Like the statement of the National Academies for the G8 summit, the release of "the most compelling evidence yet"

 

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received scant notice in the United States, despite the attention given in the same days to the implementation of

 

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the Kyoto protocols, with the most important government refusing to take part.

 

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It is important to stress "government." The standard report that the United States stands almost alone in rejecting

 

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the Kyoto protocols is correct only if the phrase "United States" excludes its population, which strongly favours the

 

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Kyoto pact (73 per cent, according to a July poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes).

 

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Perhaps only the word "malignant" could describe a failure to acknowledge, much less address, the all-too-scientific

 

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issue of climate change. Thus the "moral clarity" of the Bush administration extends to its cavalier attitude toward