Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 5 2005 (IPS) — As U.S. President George W. Bush arrives at Gleneagles, Scotland for this year’s Group of Eight (G8) Summit, he finds himself more isolated on the question of global warming than ever, at home as well as abroad.

According to a new public-opinion poll released on the eve of the summit, 94 percent of Bush’s fellow-citizens believe that Washington should do a least as much, if not more, than other industrialised nations in limiting the emission of greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are responsible for global warming.

And nearly three in four people believe that the U.S. should take part in the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that requires industrialised countries to reduce emissions about six percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012, according to the poll by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

Bush, who with drew Washington from the Kyoto negotiations shortly after taking office in 2001, reiterated his repudiation of the treaty over the weekend when he told BBC that compliance with the agreement would "wreck the U.S. economy."

Moreover, the survey found that support for stronger action by Washington is bipartisan: two-thirds of self-described Republicans now support a pending bill in Congress – still opposed by a majority of Republican senators, however – that would require the U.S. to meet Kyoto’s targets by 2020 even if it cost the average household 180 dollars a year to do so.

The division within the president’s own Republican ranks was underlined Tuesday as the Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, published an opinion piece in the London’s Independent newspaper that implicitly challenged Bush’s insistence that more studies about the relationship between emissions and warming were necessary before taking strong measures to reduce emissions.

"The debate is over. We know the science," wrote the governor, whose state has become the national leader in mandating sweeping reductions of carbon emissions in the transportation and housing sectors. "We see the threat posed by changes in our climate. And we know the time for action is now."

In what many political analysts believe was a sign of things to come, Schwarzenegger last month signed an executive order calling for California to reduce its carbon emissions by 2010 to less than 2000 levels and eventually, by 2050, to 80 percent below 1990 levels.

While less ambitious in the short run than the Kyoto Protocol targets, Schwarzenegger’s targets would have a huge impact given the relative size of California’s current emissions and the state’s influence on the national economy.

Bush, whose opposition to Kyoto has isolated him from the rest of the industrialised world with the sole exception of Australia, appeared to slightly modify his position in advance of the summit by conceding in his weekend interview that human activities, presumably including the burning of fossil fuels, were indeed contributing to warming, a point his administration has declined to affirm in the past.

Asked whether climate change was "man-made," Bush replied, "To a certain extent it is, obviously." Asked the same question just last month during a White House press conference with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush avoided answering.

Whether Bush was bowing to public opinion or conceding a key issue in advance in order to gain a G8 consensus that would not call for mandatory limits or cuts in greenhouse emissions was not clear.

Last month, the national academies of science of 11 countries, including the U.S., released a joint statement declaring that "it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities."

The statement also followed a new study based on new data from the oceans and space published in April in the journal ‘Science’ that found that the Earth is absorbing much more heat than it is giving off – a finding that accords with projections by computer models associating warming with carbon emissions.

Calling the study results a "smoking gun," the lead scientist, NASA climatologist James Hansen, told reporters that "There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed warming."

Bush, who has long acknowledged that warming could be a serious problem, has called for more studies on the relationship, if any, between greenhouse emissions and warming and for greater investment in devising technological innovations to reduce emissions and adapt to changes in the climate.

Environmentalists and most scientists who study the issue have long maintained that more urgent steps are required, and the latest polls suggest that their message is persuading more people in the United States than ever.

Asked if, at the G8 summit, the other leaders "are willing to act to limit the greenhouse gases that cause climate change," whether Bush should also be willing to do so, 86 percent of the 812 respondents, including 81 percent of self-described Republicans, said he should.

Ninety-four percent said he should do so "at least as much" as the other G8 nations, which include Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, and Russia. Forty-four percent said the U.S. should do more than the others.

Perhaps the most telling findings dealt with the public’s growing acceptance that "a consensus among the great majority of scientists that global warming exists and could do significant damage."

The survey found that the percentage of respondents who agree that such a consensus exists has risen from 43 percent in June 2004 to 52 percent today, while the percentage saying that "scientists are divided" on these questions fell from 50 percent to 39 percent. PIPA director Steven Kull said this was part of a longer trend; in 1994, only 28 percent perceived a scientific consensus.

The perception of a scientific consensus jumped sharply among Republicans, in particular, from 30 percent to 41 percent over the year; conversely, the perception of a divided scientific community dropped 17 points, from 63 percent to 46 percent.

Contrary to Bush’s views, 71 percent of respondents agreed with the notion that reducing greenhouse emissions will actually benefit the U.S. economy by making it more competitive and increasing efficient energy use as opposed to Bush’s view, held by only 23 percent of respondents that "efforts in the Untied States to reduce the release of greenhouse gases will cost too much money and hurt the U.S. economy."

In addition, the awareness of global warming as an issue has risen substantially over the past year, according to a series questions about whether respondents had been hearing or reading "a lot" or "some" about the issue recently.

Indeed, in addition to the NASA study, Schwarzenegger’s executive order, and the recent National Academy of Science statement, last month’s debate over the McCain-Lieberman bill to mandate emission reductions, as well as the explicit embrace this year by more than 150 cities in 35 states, including New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and its neighbours, of Kyoto’s targets has captured considerable media attention.

In addition, the decision announced in May by the nation’s largest company, General Electric (GE), to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions, as well as double its research spending no cleaner technologies, contributed to the perception of a growing acceptance by Bush’s corporate backers that the White House is out of touch on the issue.