[wordup] yeah for bush?

[Adam Shand]

my only hope when little bush got elected is that he would be enough of a
cock that people would have no choice but to do something dramatic.  bush
may end up being a well remembered president through no fault of his own
:)

[note: free registration is required for the nytimes]

From: Brett Shand <brett at earthlight.co.nz>
URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/01/opinion/01FRIE.html

June 1, 2001
A Tiger by the Tail
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

And now for a wild prediction. Within 12 months President Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney and all their backers in the oil industry will be
begging begging to revive the Kyoto protocol on climate change, the accord
Mr. Bush yanked America out of after taking office.

Why, you ask? Well, look what's happening in England. A group of
celebrities there have joined with environmentalists to launch a boycott
against Exxon Mobil gas stations, which in Europe go by the name Esso.
Bianca Jagger, the pop star Annie Lennox and Anita Rodrick, founder of the
Body Shop chain, helped launch the boycott because, as Ms. Jagger said,
"This is a way to tell Esso that it's not right for them to be claiming
that there is no connection between CO2 emissions and climate change."

People connected with Exxon reportedly contributed more than $1 million to
the Bush campaign. Exxon is a key supporter of research and advertisements
that try to cast doubt on the seriousness of global warming and its link
to fossil fuel emissions. Exxon was a big backer of President Bush's
decision to pull the U.S. out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called for
industrialized nations to steadily reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
Exxon is also a major force behind the Global Climate Coalition, a
business lobby that opposed Kyoto.

The "Stop Esso Campaign" is asking British drivers to shun Esso stations
until the company supports Kyoto (see www.stopesso.com). The campaign
recently spread to France. What's funny is that probably none of this
would have happened had Mr. Bush not bowed to the oil companies and pulled
the U.S. out of Kyoto. That may turn out to be his greatest gift to
environmentalism.

You see, as long as everyone was discussing how to implement Kyoto, no one
wanted to take any radical steps. Governments could say they were working
on the problem, but that negotiations were hard. Corporations could mumble
nice words about environmentalism, but not worry anything serious was
going to happen. And environmentalists could feel their cause was being
advanced, even though implementation was far off.

"As long as Kyoto was there, everyone could avoid real accountability and
pretend that something was happening," says Paul Gilding, the former head
of Greenpeace and now chairman of Ecos, one of Australia's leading
environmental consulting firms. "But now George Bush, by trashing Kyoto,
has blown everyone's cover. If you care about the environment you can't
pretend anymore. Emissions are increasing, the climate is changing and
people can now see for themselves that the world is fiddling while Rome
burns."

The result: Environmentalists refuse to sit on their hands anymore.
Instead, the smart ones are mobilizing consumers to fight multinational
polluters on their own ground. You have to admire it. It's so Republican
using the free market.

If I were Exxon, I would be worried especially when U.S. college students
come back to campus in the fall. Remember Monsanto? It was going to sell
genetically modified food to Europeans. But environmentalists in Europe
worried, rightly or wrongly, about the safety of what they were eating
mobilized the weakest link in the value chain: consumers. Consumers
demanded "G.M.O.-free" food. So supermarkets demanded it from their
suppliers, suppliers demanded it from farmers and farmers demanded it from
Monsanto. Goodbye, Monsanto.

This is real globalization activism. "The smart activists are now saying,
`O.K., You want to play markets let's play,' " says Mr. Gilding. They
don't waste time throwing stones or lobbying governments. That takes
forever and can easily be counter- lobbied by corporations. No, no, no.
They start with consumers at the pump, get them to pressure the gas
stations, get the station owners to pressure the companies and the
companies to pressure governments. After all, consumers do have choices
where they buy their gas, and there are differences now. Shell and BP-
Amoco (which is also the world's biggest solar company) both withdrew from
the oil industry lobby that has been dismissing climate change.

What Mr. Bush did in trashing Kyoto was to leave serious environmental
activists with nowhere else to turn but the market. The smart ones get it.
You will be hearing from them soon at a gas station near you.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company