Bush goes green

Credit where credit is due. George W. Bush has just created the world's largest marine ecological reserve. This from the president who has been the greatest walking ecological disaster in history.

A NECKLACE of uninhabited islands spanning 140,000 square miles of the Pacific — almost twice the size of Britain — was declared the world’s biggest marine nature reserve yesterday.

President Bush’s designation of the northwestern Hawaiian island chain as a national monument was being described by administration officials as the “single largest act of conservation in US history”

It also represents a remarkable departure for the President, whose relationship with his country’s vast environmental lobby has been one of intense, and mutual, contempt. Only five years ago, the Administration was considering removing the limited protections from the area’s coral reef ecosystem that had been introduced by President Clinton.

The reason for this epiphany?

Mr Bush’s own inspiration is said to have been sourced in a private White House screening of a 65-minute nature documentary in April where the perils facing the archipelago’s fragile marine ecosystem were laid bare.

The film fired the presidential imagination, according to those in attendance. Mr Bush leapt up from his seat after the screening to congratulate film-maker Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late underwater explorer Jacques.

You'll excuse me if I don't cheer too loudly. I have this niggling feeling that there is an ulterior motive. And my apologies to the "war" president if there isn't.

Hey! Since movies really turn him on and get him to make decisions, how about a private screening for Bush and his missus of this?

Who knows what could happen.