Presidential Pounds and the Fate of the Earth

Columnist Gail Collins has a hilarious--and sobering--take on the Bush administration's approach to environmental problems. Click to read "The Fat Bush Theory" from this morning's New York Times.

Mr. Neff chortled as I read her column aloud, but he pointed out that reduction in growth--the strategy Collins lampoons--is also the strategy of responsible environmentalists. The difference between Mr. Bush and other world leaders is not the strategy per se, but the fact that others are calling for greater reductions and setting more stringent goals (or setting goals at all).

Readers genetically or geographically inclined to dismiss Collins's viewpoint out of hand should note that, way down in her article, she notes that Europeans, who set goals, aren't doing such a great job of meeting them.

Does anybody have a solution that will stop environmental destruction cold without plunging the world into a fatal economic depression? Or should we Midwesterners, like Voltaire, cultivate our own gardens and wait for global warming to turn Illinois into a coastal resort?