About-Face: The Politics of CO2

• Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide (Mar. 14, 2001) • Mr. Bush Reverses Course (Mar. 15, 2001)

To the Editor:

Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14):

It comes as a shock, but hardly a surprise, to learn that President Bush has decided to abandon his position on carbon dioxide emissions (if in fact that was ever really his position). Throughout the campaign, I kept thinking of him as the Rorschach candidate. Moderates, conservatives and even some environmentalists saw what they wanted to see, as the candidate ran toward the center. Now safely in office, his true colors come through.

If he had said that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant, and that scientific knowledge of the causes of global warming was incomplete, might these views have cost him half a thousand votes in Florida? 

BRYAN CURRY
Phoenix, March 14, 2001 

Re "Mr. Bush Reverses Course" (editorial, March 15):

With one sweeping pronouncement, President Bush has imperiled the global environment, defied our global allies, endangered our pursuit of clean energy and undermined the credibility of his own Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

And for what? To assure the country's utilities that when push comes to shove, the continued wealth of his corporate sponsors will always be uppermost on the president's agenda. Unless it is reversed, this irresponsible decision will haunt us all for generations. 

BILL SCHILLACI
Ridgewood, N.J., March 15, 2001 

Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14):

The exorbitantly high profits that the generators of electric power are now making would make it easy for them to bear the costs of retrofitting their generators to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.

And if requiring that new generating plants meet tighter emission controls would materially slow their construction, the generating companies could be given the option of retrofitting them later. 

W. DAVID SLAWSON
Los Angeles, March 14, 2001 

Re "Mr. Bush Reverses Course" (editorial, March 15):

The secret word is "nuclear." If we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the long run (the only thing that counts), we will "go nuclear." But politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, are afraid to utter the word. 

ROBERT W. ALBRECHT
Seattle, March 15, 2001 

The writer is an electrical engineering professor, University of Washington.

Re "Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide" (front page, March 14): This decision suggests that, while President Bush insists that he will "leave no child behind," he evidently has no qualms about leaving them a ruined Earth. 

STEPHEN C. WILSON
New York, March 15, 2001