"Katrina's Real Name is Global Warming"

The Bush administration has drafted regulations that would ease pollution controls on older, dirtier power plants and could allow those that modernize to emit more pollution, rather than less. The language could undercut dozens of pending state and federal lawsuits aimed at forcing coal-fired plants to cut back emissions of harmful pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. The draft rules were obtained by the Washington Post from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Meanwhile, as the Gulf Coast struggles to cope the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina, a number of analysts around the country and the world are reflecting on the unusual severity of the storm and are making a connection with global warming.

In Germany, Environmental Minister Jurgen Tritten sparked a political firestorm this week when he penned an article in a German newspaper saying "Greenhouse gases have to be radically reduced worldwide. The US has, up until this point, had its eyes closed to this emergency." He linked Hurricane Katrina to global warming and America's refusal to reduce emission.

In 2001, the Bush administration announced it would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol that has been signed by 120 countries. The global treaty went into effect earlier this year without the support of the United States.

In an article in the Boston Globe Tuesday, journalist and author Ross Gelbspan writes, "The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming." Gelbspan goes on to write, QUOTE "Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue."

* Ross Gelbspan, special projects editor of The Boston Globe. He conceived, directed and edited a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. He is author of "The Heat is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate" and "Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists are Fueling the Climate Crisis -- and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/01/147233