Dozens of world leaders are to gather at the United Nations on Monday for a full agenda of talks on how to fight global warming, and President Bush is skipping all the day’s events but the dinner. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, is hoping to jump-start negotiations on replacing the Kyoto Protocol.
His focus instead is on his own gathering of leaders in Washington later this week, a meeting with the same stated goal, a reduction in the emissions blamed for climate change, but a fundamentally different idea of how to achieve it. Mr. Bush’s aides say that the parallel meeting does not compete against the United Nations’ process — hijacking it, as his critics charge. They say that Mr. Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world’s emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the United States, to set its own policies rather than having limits imposed by binding international treaty.
“It’s our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be,” said James L. Connaughton, the president’s chief environmental adviser. Mr. Bush’s approach sets the stage for a new round of diplomatic confrontation. And it raises the prospect that he could once again put the United States in the position of objecting to any binding international agreement intended to slow or reverse the emissions linked to rising temperatures…
It’s interesting that The American Enterprise Institute, the Organization that populated the Bush Administration, was founded by Industrialist Lewis Harold Brown to promotes the advancement of free enterprise capitalism. Mr. Brown was the President of the Johns-Manville Corporation – America’s largest manufacturer of Asbestos. As it became increasingly apparent that Asbestos caused lethal lung disease, he and his company struggled to keep that medical fact hidden. The Asbestos cover-up a well known story, documented here. As for Johns-Manville:
Johns-Manville is an American corporation involved in manufacture of insulation and roofing materials. The stock was included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from January 29, 1930 to August 27, 1982. It was replaced with American Express. In 2001 it was bought by Berkshire Hathaway. Since 2004, when Chairman & CEO Jerry Henry retired, Steve Hochhauser has been Chairman, President & CEO. The company was founded as the H.W. Johns Manufacturing Company in New York in 1858, and was an early asbestos manufacturer in the United States. The Manville Covering Company was founded in Wisconsin in 1885 by C. B. Manville. C. B. Manville’s grandson was the much-married socialite Tommy Manville. H.W. Johns and Manville merged in 1901 to form H.W. Johns-Manville, which changed to Johns-Manville in 1926. Industrialist Lewis H. Brown was president of the Johns-Manville Corporation in the 1930s. The Canadian branch of the corporation was involved in the extremely violent Asbestos Strike in Canada in 1949. The corporation also faced major class-action lawsuits in the 1980s based on asbestos-related injuries, and filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1982, then the largest company in US history to do so. The bankruptcy was resolved by the formation of the Manville Trust to pay asbestos tort claimants in an orderly fashion by giving the trust the lion’s share of the equity in the company. The bankruptcy took over 5 years to process and resulted in extremely protracted litigation. The Manville Trust is still in operation today.
In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney left A.E.I. to become C.E.O. of Halliburton, a company with a huge Asbestos liability. While he was in charge there, Halliburton was actively promoting legislation to limit Asbestos related litigation. The Bush Administration has supported this effort to limit Corporate Asbestos liability, as has A.E.I. Now, the Bush Administration is actively undermining the United Nations attempt to get the world’s leaders to reach a consensus on how to approach Global Warming. Having invaded Iraq to "protect vital American Interests in the region" [to use one of Cheney’s favorite phrases, meaning OIL], George W. Bush is essentially boycotting the U.N. gathering to discuss Global Warming – whore for the Petroleum Industry.
It’s ironic that while we rale at Bush’s Iraq War and the death and destruction he’s brought to the world in his quest for oil, his most lasting legacy may well be his stonewalling on Global Warming in the service of the oil lobby. I remember taking history courses in college where they spoke of "Big Business" and its influence on government. It felt like old stuff – graft, fat men with mustaches and cigars paying off politicians – the stuff on the pictures on Monopoly game cards. I thought it was part of our past – something nipped in the bud by "Muckrakers" and "The Great depression." Hardly! And though we think of the American Enterprise Institute as filled with Neoconservative war-mongers, their policies are the remnants of the American Era of "Big Business." Well, they aren’t remnants any more. And notice the phrasing of Bush’s environmental advisor, “It’s our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be.” Does that sound like the way an environmental expert talks – "potfolio of policies" – or does it sound like the lingo of an M.B.A.? It is classic Bush to hide his service of Corporate interests behind a pseudo-philosophic line like national sovereignty.
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