That's according to Christine Todd Whitman, the first EPA head for the Bush administration, who like European nations and many other fundamentallly decent folks, believed the Prez when he said on the campaign trail in 2000 that he would reduce CO2 emissions to control global warming.
She blames Dick Cheney.
On a tough-minded Frontline program called Hot Politics that is already making waves for its relentless interview with Republican pollster and strategist Frank Luntz, Whitman says that the Bush administration was surprised that its abrupt, unilateral about face on CO2 emissions caused so much controversy. But she adds that they didn't much care, either.
I'm not sure they understood how big a reaction it was going to be, and I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference if they had... The way it happened was the equivalent to flipping the bird, frankly, to the world, about an issue about which (the world) felt so deeply.
She points the finger at Cheney, as did Bush's first Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who says in "The Price of Loyalty" that Cheney spiked his efforts to launch an anti-CO2 initiative within the administration.
"Flipping the bird to the world." Sounds like Cheney speaking to Pat Leahy on the Senate floor, doesn't it? More soon as I see the program.
(HT: Dateline Earth)
