The (deputy) director's cut

A review of the current week shows that it’s been a busy one for the environment. Since you might not know this given the way Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace has dominated the headlines, here’s a quick recap.

Monday’s newspapers highlighted a new study asserting that the world must bring carbon emissions down near zero to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures. Okay, so it’s worse than we thought. At least maybe lawmakers will start taking the issue seriously.

Then again, Spitzer probably eroded any last remaining faith you might have in elected officials. Fair enough. A decorated prostitution ring fighter like Spitzer getting caught hiring a prostitute would be similar to finding out that an environmental champion like Ted Kennedy opposes an offshore wind farm because it’s slated to be built near his family compound on the Cape.

Oh yeah, that happened as well.

Back to the environment. The same day science was making headlines on climate change, a group of Southern Baptist leaders announced their denomination has a "biblical duty" to stop global warming. If this comes as a surprise to you, then it’s worth noting they’re about three years behind the evangelicals on this. And while we’re talking religion, the pope recently released a new slate of seven deadly sins, effectively providing the first update to the original list in over 1500 years. Turns out polluting the environment is New Deadly Sin #1.

George Bush is supposedly a man of strong religious convictions. Do you think this got his attention? Maybe there was a time when he and his band of oilmen cronies could wave off such sentiments as a faction of the liberal agenda. But last I checked, the Southern Baptists aren’t exactly part of the radical left.

Unfortunately, other events this week clearly show the example provided by the religiously ordained didn’t get through to the White House. Monday represented yet another missed legal deadline by the Bush administration about whether to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. While the Department of Interior drags its feet to protect our furry friends from the north, whose population is rapidly declining because global warming is melting the Arctic sea ice critical for its survival, they’re wasting no time offering new leases for oil drilling in prime polar bear habitat. 29 million acres since the first missed deadline in early January, to be exact.

Which brings me to the final environmental event of this week worth mentioning. Greenpeace joined the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council in a lawsuit against the Bush administration to force their hand on listing the polar bear. If the Baptists and Catholics can’t sway him, maybe the courts can.

I guess even Providence finds itself waiting out the term of history's worst environmental president.