Everybody's a Critic

New voices join chorus pushing Bush to act on climate change

At this point it's getting hard to keep track, but a couple more notable folks have joined the ranks of those calling on the Bush administration, either implicitly or explicitly, to act on global warming. Perhaps most unexpected is James Baker, former secretary of state and Bush family consigliere, who helped President Bush triumph in Florida in 2000. "It may surprise you a little bit, but maybe it's because I'm a hunter and a fisherman, but I think we need to pay a little more attention to what we need to do to protect our environment," Baker told the Houston Forum Club last week. "When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum ... saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen." Ya think? Meanwhile, Lord May, president of the U.K.'s most prestigious group of scientists, the Royal Society, is more blunt. He criticized Bush and other leaders who are failing to act, calling them "modern-day Neros over climate change, fiddling while the world burns."