BUSH STANDS FIRM ON GLOBAL-WARMING ISSUES

Before leaving for his trip to Europe last week, President Bush promised new technological initiatives on global warming.

The Associated Press reported that he was "working to deflect international criticism" in advance of his trip.

The president urged a united international front to confront climate change, citing a clear link between man-made pollutants and increases in the earth's surface temperatures. He stopped well short, though, of endorsing mandatory restrictions on emissions and renewed his earlier condemnation of the 1997 Kyoto Treaty.

In the latter, he is in good company.

The Kyoto accord was unanimously rejected in a test vote by the U.S. Senate, owing to the fact that it imposes drastic restrictions on advanced nations such as the United States, but none at all on developing nations.

Four years after it was rolled out, the Kyoto accord has been ratified by exactly one nation: Romania.

For whatever criticism he has to endure on this trip from the self-righteous Europeans, it's apparent that they aren't willing to live under the Kyoto restrictions either.

What rot.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal this week was a signer of the much-touted report on global warming, a Professor Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He stoutly maintains that whatever warming may be occurring, it isn't at all clear that human activity is a cause, nor what the remedy should be, if any.

Such advice won't reassure those who worship at the Church of Global Climate Change and demand ever-more draconian measures, but somehow we are guessing the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west on a more-or-less intact globe in, say, the year 2020. Till then, we hope the president stands his ground.