Bush vs. the EPA

NO SOONER had the Bush administration grudgingly reported for the first time that manmade sources of greenhouse gases are major contributors to global warming than President Bush dismissed the report by his own the Environmental Protection Agency. While the report made it clear that the administration will still not take serious steps to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal contributor to global warming, Bush's disdainful reference yesterday to ''the report put out by the bureaucracy'' strikingly demonstrates how isolated the administration's environmental specialists are from its policy makers.


As the head of this ''bureaucracy,'' EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman should stand by her staff and use its report to urge the president to bring policy in line with science.

As it is, the report is hardly a bold step forward in dealing with climate change. While it clearly states that human beings are the likely cause of much recent global warming, it advances no new measures to reduce heat-trapping gases. Instead, the report talks about making accommodations to the changes that global warming will bring.

But apparently the report writers incurred the disfavor of the president by pointing to industrial society's burning of fossil fuels as the chief cause of the recent buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This reflects the conclusion of a National Academy of Sciences report last year but is squarely at odds with the position of many in the coal, petroleum, utility, and auto industries, who say the evidence is still inconclusive.