Did You Know?

Is It Me, or Is It Getting Warm in Here?
The Bush Administration’s Approach to Global Warming and Air Pollution

• In April, after meeting with lobbyists from the auto, oil, and utility industries, the Bush administration worked aggressively to oust Dr. Robert T. Watson as chair of a prestigious international panel of scientists assessing climate change. Watson is an atmospheric chemist and chief scientist at the World Bank who has pushed for a crackdown on the power-plant emissions that cause global warming. His replacement, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, is an economist and engineer.

• Bush’s "Clear Skies" air-pollution plan replaces vigorous enforcement of the Clean Air Act with a scheme that allows dirty industries to buy the right to pollute from cleaner ones. While it nominally imposes caps on mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions, those limits would allow three times more mercury emissions than current law and 50 percent more sulfur emissions while doing nothing about carbon dioxide emissions, the chief cause of global warming.