The good news is that environmental experts are more convinced than ever before that the Earth is warming and that human activity is the primary reason. I say this is good news because we have been warned and also have someone to blame if the warnings are not followed. This report from the New York Times last week may be the most important story the newspaper has ever published:

The world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas from the atmospheric buildup of smokestack and tailpipe gases that trap heat, but warming can be substantially blunted with prompt action, an international network of climate experts said today.

In a report released here today, the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, in its fourth assessment since 1990 of the causes and consequences of climate change, for the first time expressed with near certainty - more than 90 percent confidence - that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases were the main drivers of warming since 1950.

Anyone watching Al Gore's documentary on global warming knows that this issue must be tackled immediately. Schoolkids in England are watching An Inconvenient Truth. Why not American kids? The documentary is easy to understand and follow and the visual evidence of global warming's impact will probably make the kids run home and hide the keys to their parents' SUVs.

I finally got around to watching An Inconvenient Truth this weekend. What struck me more than anything else was Al Gore's capacity to engage the viewer and explain the environmental catastrophe in a sober way. He threw in some outrageous anti-environmental statements by former Presidents Reagan and Bush, and there's a few seconds devoted to Gore's loss in the 2000 presidential election, but this guy has every right to be angry that the guy stewarding our environmental policies is dumber than a box of rocks. I kept thinking how ironic it was that the one guy who has devoted his career to exposing our most pressing issue (global warming) lost out to a guy who's in the pocket of the oil and gas industry.

If global warming is such a problem, how come voters are not responding at the ballot box? Because they are being lied to. Al Gore hinted at this in the movie, but I will go all the way: global warming makes some people a lot of money, and they will do anything to distract us. The people behind the propaganda that global warming is not a serious problem should be prohibited by law from holding any positions of responsibility for the rest of their lives. They should be made to work menial jobs (like burger flipper), and if they have Ph.D's or masters degrees, they can be given the night-time manager's position at McDonald's. Anything to get them away from positions of substance.

At the bottom of the barrel are the propagandists in the U.S. media who must think that environmentalism equals communism. Proving once against the Fox News is run by fourth grade interns, last week they had a "debate" on global warming by two nay-sayers. No surprise there, except that Fox New didn't tell us that these nay-sayers are affiliated with foundations with a vested interest in halting any environmental reform.

The country's most popular radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, also weighed in his effort to win the "ugly American" award. When the newspapers this weekend ran stories about the new global warming report, we saw photographs of polar bears stranded on these small icy islands. It's photos like this which will change the public's perception of global warming. I accept the notion that people in general don't give a crap about other people, but everyone loves animals. We cannot live with ourselves if polar bears are drowning because daddy wants a bigger SUV or Exxon/Mobil wants more profits.

Limbaugh has made a career out of being a social degenerate. He's not letting up. Last week, he joked about the polar bears with his ignorant listeners. This documented narcotics addict said:

This whole thing is totally misleading. They’re not even stranded on an ice floe that’s broken apart. They’re just out there just playing around. They’re just out there. You know, just like your cat goes to its litter box. When’s the last time your cat got stranded in its litter box? Just like your pit bull attacks and kills the neighbor’s baby horse, whatever, I mean these things happen. It’s called nature.

OK, so Limbaugh and Fox News represent the lunatic fringe in American society. What do our elected officials say? According to Associated Press:

Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended consequences" - including job losses - that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

"There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would - may - lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap," Bodman said. "You would then have the U.S. economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions, potentially even worse emissions."

President Bush used the same economic reasoning when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, an international treaty requiring 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by 5 percent on average below 1990 levels by 2012. The White House has said the treaty would have cost 5 million U.S. jobs.

News reports show that the Bush administration has restricted its officials from mentioning "global" and "warming" in the same sentence. Very little about the disgraceful Bush administration surprises me anymore, but this is quite shocking:

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch says it was a "stunning personal experience" to hear federal scientists say they had been stymied from talking about climate change.

"There was a story about a scientist who got authorized to speak at a conference. He was prohibited from using the phrase 'global warming.' He was allowed to say 'global,' and he could say 'warming,' but he couldn't put them next to each other. It became a charade," Welch said.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on which Welch serves, is holding hearings on the administration's handling of the global warming issue. The panel's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the administration appeared to want "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."

Welch said he had read about scientists being muzzled, but, "It's a stunning personal experience to hear directly from scientists whose life work has been compromised, who live in fear of retaliation or compromised careers if they adhere to their code of ethics as scientists."

We are at a tipping point. We can continue to pollute the environment and destroy the only planet that gives us life, or we can live within our means and make the world habitable for our children and grandchildren. We can demand that the political parties adopt the platform of the Green Party and refuse to give our support for the rotting corpses now managing environmental policy in the United States.

More broadly, we can demand that the next President sign a binding promise to substantially reduce carbon emissions and also agree that he will leave office if he fails to do so within 100 days of taking office. And if he does not leave office on the 101st day, we can (literally) drag him out of the Oval Office and throw him out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. And we can put his personal possessions into a cardboard box and mail them to his home address. Or we can pursue less violent means to solve the problem.