Paul Rogers, often seen by Washington political conservatives as among the more "balanced" environmental reporters at major American newspapers, takes an interesting approach to informing his readers about global warming: He compares and contrasts the current climate change situation with the stratospheric ozone hole story of two decades ago. He draws the reader in, pointing first to "a familiar plot" and then to the so-far "completely different endings" with Washington national leaders stubbornly holding firm on the research-is-uncertain theme even while "the hard evidence is in."

Rogers writes that the evidence "is at least as compelling as it was with the thinning of the earth's protective ozone layer in the 1980s." He points to a rash of hottest-years-since-1980 and to increased droughts, coastal flooding, forest fires, and tropical diseases anticipated in coming decades. Under conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. at last stepped up front-and-center on the ozone hole issue, but nowadays under President George W. Bush, "America's reaction is a far cry from 1987." He points to sagging public concern toward the issue, at least as measured by a recent Gallup poll, and says the "level of scientific discourse has fallen so far" that the disputed science of best-selling novelist Michael Crichton is lauded on Capitol Hill by the Senate environment committee chairman (also see: Michael Crichton's State of Fear: A Science Journalist Takes on a Popular Novelist, April 2005).

Rogers points to three basic reasons for the contrasting political reactions to "two similarly massive ecological threats": the power of visual images, for instance those of the ozone hole versus more remote images of melting glaciers; the absence of any strong conservation leaders in President Bush's Cabinet; and the different economic trade-offs posed by the two sets of issues.

"Meanwhile, scientific evidence keeps piling up," Rogers writes. "Increasingly the chorus calling for U.S. action includes more than just social liberals and environmental activists." He points to former Secretary of State James Baker, "one of the Bush family's most loyal allies," and to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a close Bush ally, as among those calling for more direct American involvement on the issue.