THE US: The Bush Administration has admitted in a report to the UN that climate change, brought about largely by the burning of fossil fuels which send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is likely to cause serious permanent effects to the US environment.
The admissions in the Environmental Protection Agency report, produced as a requirement under a 1992 treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, mark a remarkable about-face for an Administration closely tied to oil and coal interests that has to date sought to minimise the long-term effects of climate change and even called into question its links with human activity.
But the agency makes clear that the new-found concern for the "problem" of climate change - it used to be an "issue" - does not mean a change of policy, and certainly not a belated conversion to the Kyoto Protocol which was repudiated by the Administration.
The document, "US Climate Action Report 2002" (www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications/car/) strongly concludes that no matter what is done to cut emissions in the future, nothing can be done about the environmental consequences of several decades' worth of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere."Because of the momentum in the climate system and natural climate variability, adapting to a changing climate is inevitable," the report says. "The question is whether we adapt poorly or well."
In arguing that the US should learn to live with the changes the report chimes with President Bush's own greenhouse gas proposals in February which seek voluntary curbs on the rate of increase in emissions instead of the binding cuts in current levels sought under Kyoto. The Kyoto treaty is due to be implemented without US participation.
Among the consequences for the US anticipated by the EPA are the disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes.
The report also emphasises that global warming carries potential benefits for the country, including increased farm production and forest growth from longer growing seasons, and from more rainfall and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis.
But "some of the goods and services lost through the disappearance or fragmentation of natural ecosystems are likely to be costly or impossible to replace," the report says.
"A few ecosystems, such as alpine meadows in the Rocky Mountains and some barrier islands, are likely to disappear entirely in some areas," it says.
"Other ecosystems, such as south-eastern forests, are likely to experience major species shifts or break up into a mosaic of grasslands, woodlands and forests."
Despite continued arguments and lobbying by oil industry groups that the evidence is not yet clear, the report unambiguously states that humans are the likely cause of most of the recent warming.
"The Bush Administration now admits that global warming will change America's most unique wild places and wildlife forever," the president of the National Wildlife Federation, Mr Mark Van Putten, told the New York Times. "How can it acknowledge global warming is a disaster in the making and then refuse to help solve the problem, especially when solutions are so clear?"
Its publication, without any fanfare, appears to be part of an effort by the White House to re-establish at least some environmental credentials following a bruising defeat by the Senate on drilling in the Arctic wilderness.
