CANADIAN PM PLANS BUSH REALITY SHOW

DUBLIN, WPI - Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has pledged to do whatever he can to persuade US President George W. Bush to recognize the reality of climate change when they meet at the G8 meeting in Scotland, say senior Canadian officials.

“My good friend the president doesn’t understand much about the environment. He’s from Texas, which is mostly desert you know, so most of his life has been spent air-conditioned!” the Prime Minister joked. “But global warming is an inescapable fact, a terrible threat to humanity. I will use metaphors to help the President learn. I will say,’A bush cannot grow if it is under a rock.’”

No one should expects the president to sign the Kyoto Protocol against global warming. With so little education on the issue a simple acknowledgment of climate change is the best most members of the G-8 can hope for.

“Look, this is a man who’s own political office hired oil lobbyists to vet scientific documents with the purpose of deleting any data that proved Global Warming. It’s little wonder he doesn’t think there is a problem- all the facts have been censored out by the oil industry.” complained Canadian Foreign Secretary Terry Bly Borring

The United States is the only G8 country that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, claiming it would hurt the economy. Bush has been intractable on the issue saying, “Where I live it’s hot most of the time! I haven’t seen any change. ‘Till I do I’m not going to ask my good friends in industry to make any sacrifices.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair sees the matter differently. He has called climate change "probably the most serious threat we face." Environmentalists have urged Blair to consider leaving the U.S. behind as he works to unite the world's top democracies in an urgent action plan to confront global warming.

“Mr Bush simply has too many conflicting interests and the entourage which surrounds him have prevented him from any balanced understanding of the issues.” said British Secretary of the Environment, Sir Whitt Lesyanks. The Secretary was apparently referring to Vice-President Cheney and Karl Rove both of whom are still heavily invested in oil production and to Bush's close relationship with Saudi Arabia.

On Monday, for the first time in his presidency, Bush described climate change as "significant," but he called for shifting the debate away from limits on greenhouse gas emissions to new technology that would reduce environmental damage without restricting energy use.

“Why can’t we build giant machines that produce ozone and pump it up there to the atmosphere?” the President asked an assembled group of schoolchildren at a hastily assembled press conference in suburban Houston. “You kids there, I know ya’ll got good imaginations! I’ll bet you can think up even more things, all kinds of fancy new machines and things to solve these problems cain’t you?” he asked the youngsters squirming in the unexpected heat caused by a rolling blackout.

A British official involved in the pre-summit talks said the G8 could reach an accord on global warming that recognizes the problem and the need to combat it, though it likely will not include the world's biggest polluter and consumer of fossil fuels.