Man of the Year

To the Editor:

It's easy for George W. Bush to express sorrow and to send condolences and even some aid for the Indian Ocean tsunami devastation, since he appears to bear no culpability, as he does in other situations in other parts of the world.

But the next time there is a severe offshore earthquake and resulting tsunami, the sea level will be just a little bit higher, and the water and destruction will go a bit further inland and kill even more people. And for that, he will bear some culpability for not even wanting to consider global warming, much less do anything about it as the leader of the country most responsible for man-made warming and ice-cap melting.

Pierre E. Biscaye
Palisades, N.Y., Dec. 27, 2004
The writer is a special research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

(from NEW YORK TIMES 12.29.04)

I am not inclined, usually, to address political issues in this setting. Not because I am disinclined to consider political issues; on the contrary, I get absorbed and passionately involved because of the disastrous course of Bush and his cronies. But there are more than enough political blogs. Every morning I read the editorial page of the TIMES first thing; and today this particular letter struck a chord. How much anger, how much disbelief, how much desperation some of us feel when we witness the destruction, both moral and material, that this president has enabled? How much more can he do before it stops?