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http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_read.asp?id=750084112006

The Moment of Truth

......The rapid accumulation of global-warming pollution in the Earth's atmosphere is now confronting human civilization with a crisis like no other we have ever encountered. This climate crisis is, indeed, extremely dangerous.......

All of this, incredibly, could be set in motion in the lifetime of the children already living - unless we act boldly and quickly. Even more incredibly, some of the leading scientific experts are now telling us that without dramatic changes, we are in grave danger of crossing a point of no return within the next 10 years!

So the message is unmistakable. This crisis means danger!

But in order to move through the danger to seize the opportunity, we have first to recognize that we are in fact facing a crisis. So why is it that our leaders seem not to hear such clarion warnings? Are they resisiting the truth because they know that the moment they acknowledge it they will face a moral imperative to act? Is it simply more convenient to ignore the warnings?

Perhaps, but inconvenient truths do not go away just because they are not seen. Indeed, when they are not reponded to, their significance doesn't diminish; it grows.

For example, the administration was warned on August 6, 2001, of an attack by al-Qaeda, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," said the intelligence community in a message so important that it was the headline of the president's daily briefing that day, five weeks before the attacks of September 11. Didn't he ( Bush/Nero ) see that clear warning? Why were no questions asked, meetings called, evidence marshaled, clarifications sought?

The Bible says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Four Augusts later, as Hurricane Katrina was roaring across the unusually warm water of the Gulf of Mexico and growing into a deadly monster that was less than two days away from slamming into New Orleans, the administration received another clear warning: the levees - which had been built to protect the city against smaller, less powerful hurricanes - were in grave danger. But once again an urgent warning was ignored. The videotapes of one session make clear that the president heard the warnings but, again, asked not a single question.

This not a partisan analysis. A recent report by Republicans in the House of Representatives called the White House reaction a "blinding lack of situational awareness." Repbulican representative Tom Davis, of Virginia, the chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, which produced the report, added, "The White House failed to act on the massive amounts of information at its disposal." Coupled with "disjointed decision making," the report continued, the president's failure to see the danger "needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina's horror."

Where there is a blinding lack of situational awareness, the people perish.

Nearly 70 years ago, when a horrible and unprecedented storm of another kind was gathering in Europe, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain found it inconvenient to see the truth about the nature of the evil threat posed by the Nazis. In criticizing his government's blinding lack of awareness, Winston Churchill said, "So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resovled to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent." After the appeasement at Munich, Churchill said, "This is only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year - unless by supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor we rise again and take our stand for freedom."

Then he warned prophetically that "the era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."

Today, there are dire warnings that the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization is bearing down on us, gathering strength as it comes. And these warnings have also been met with a blinding lack of awareness, by the Congress as well as by the administration.

After the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, many Americans now believe that we have entered a period of consequences - that Katrina, as horrible as it was, may have been the first sip of a bitter cup which will proffered to us over and over again until we act on the truth we have wished would go away. And they are beginning to demand that the administration open its eyes and look at the truth, no matter how inconvenient it might be fore all of us - not least for the special interests that want us to ignore global warming.