Feeling the Heat

President Bush has been running from the issue of global warming for four years, but the walls are closing in. Scientists throughout the world are telling him that the rise in atmospheric temperature justifies aggressive action. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other prominent Republicans are telling him to get off the dime. His corporate allies are deserting him. And the Senate is inching closer to endorsing a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

A result is that Mr. Bush seems increasingly isolated and his rhetoric of denial increasingly irrational. Last week, a whistleblower asserted that a senior White House official, formerly an oil lobbyist, had changed scientific reports to minimize the climate problem. The official, Philip Cooney, resigned last Friday, although the White House insisted that the embarrassing disclosures had nothing to do with his departure. Whatever the truth, this was hardly the first time Bush officials cooked the books for political ends. It was just this kind of nonsense that persuaded an exasperated Christie Whitman to return to private life.