The ultimate irony - George Bush slashes worldwide carbon emissions

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8681&page=0

As referred to below in Welcome, my article from four years ago. A few highlights:

If you’re concerned about global warming, you’ve probably already changed to energy-efficient light bulbs, you take your own reusable bags to the shops, compost your scraps and turn your TV off standby. That will solve the problem. After all, that’s what the government and environment groups tell us to do, right? Except of course this type of demand-reduction behaviour, while slowing the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions, will never solve the problem....

Simple actions capture people's attention and provide an entry-level activity. Present people with the daunting big-ticket solutions and they turn away. Give them something easy and you have them moving in the right direction and, in theory, ready to make the step up to the next level.
That is the theory, but, as plentiful social research confirms, it doesn't work...  

While George wasn’t the slightest bit interested in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, eight years of his presidency have resulted in the credit crisis which looks set to decimate worldwide productivity and perhaps result in the first reduction in atmospheric CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution... 

In his article The decline of the American superpower, Roubini set out the main reasons for the credit crisis, which have the fingerprints of Bush all over them:
But since 2001 the further worsening of the US current account deficit was driven instead by growing fiscal deficits - especially in the 2001-2004 period - caused by unsustainable tax cuts and by the buildup of spending on foreign wars and on domestic security and since 2002 by the collapse of household savings and boom in investment in unproductive stock of housing capital that the housing bubble induced ... By now the US is the biggest net borrower in the world - running current account deficits still in the 700 billion dollars range - and the biggest net debtor in the world with its foreign liabilities now over 2.5 trillion dollars.

See how it all falls together by following the link above.