What's happened to that storied American industrial genius and daring that achieves the impossible when asked? Has America lost its nerve?
When faced with World War II, U.S. plants produced 295,959 wartime aircraft in five years. The Manhattan Project unlocked the mysteries of nuclear power and built the first atomic bombs. Industry rose to President John Kennedy's challenge to land on the moon—and did so in eight years after he promised lunar flight.
But now, when the world has turned to Washington for leadership in fighting the calamitous consequences of global warming, President Bush has gone timid, declaring a hiatus on American genius and daring and pleading that a crash program to cut greenhouse gases is too expensive.
Do the president and industry believe delay in counterattacking climate change isn't expensive? Gradual earth warming signals extinction of species, famine due to drier climates, rising sea levels that will swamp small island states and create massive refugee populations seeking higher ground plus spreading health problems, even in industrialized nations.
Without a wide-ranging global war on warming, United Nations Secretary Ban Ki-moon glumly predicts the world and its people face "oblivion."
Against the backdrop of this crisis, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal ruefully asks why aren't presidential candidates discussing energy policy.
Indeed. Every day's delay in developing energy sources that spare further damage to the environment is a step closer to the point of no return—when air pollution is so advanced that no remedies can reverse destruction of the atmosphere.
