Bush official explains, accepts climate change, our role in it

TimesDispatch.com | Bush official explains, accepts climate change, our role in it

Global warming is real, and the issue now is how to deal with it, a top climate-change official in the Bush administration said last night.

"I think we'll be able to address this problem, [but] it's not going to be easy," said Harlan L. Watson, President Bush's senior climate negotiator.

Watson spoke to nearly 200 people at St. Christopher's Middle School in a program presented by the World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond, an educational nonprofit group.

Much of Watson's talk was a primer on climate change. He explained how heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide, released by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, are building up in Earth's atmosphere.

The Earth is warming, and mankind is largely responsible, Watson said.

The assertion seemed to take a few people in the audience by surprise.

Tyla Matteson, legislative chairwoman for the Sierra Club's Virginia chapter, said she believed Bush administration officials recently have changed their position by acknowledging global warming. But she said Bush officials are not doing enough to combat it.

"Acknowledgement is better than finding more excuses to deny it," Matteson said in an interview.

Watson said administration officials have acknowledged climate change since 2001, Bush's first year in office.

He said the administration has committed billions to study climate change and to offer tax incentives for technologies that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, among other approaches.

Watson holds a master's degree in economics and a doctorate in physics.

This month, an international group of scientists said it is 90 percent sure that heat-trapping gases released by human activities are warming the Earth.

Global warming also is heating up as an issue in Virginia.

Last month, a report from a state panel of scientists, industry representatives and environmentalists said global warming posed a serious threat to Virginians and their property.

The state could see more and worse -- heat waves, droughts, storms and floods, among other problems, the report said. It called for a commission to study the problem.

A state House of Delegates subcommittee this session killed a proposal to study global warming.