At the risk of sounding like the proverbial Grinch, I fear the British Columbia government’s new carbon tax is just going to punish the victims of global warming while letting the perpetrators go unscathed and doing nothing to mitigate climate change.

The government is still subsidizing oil and gas exploration, along with highway and pipeline construction, which is precisely the kind of favored treatment for oil companies and auto manufacturers that got into this fix in the first place.

It’s tempting, but most certainly optimistic, to view President Bush’s 2008 State of the Union as his last gasp at blocking progress on global warming. He will, after all, be gone from office before the year is out and it’s tempting to think he hasn’t sufficient time to further damage efforts to reign in climate change.

But there’s no time to lose. And continued obstructionism by the Bush Administration doesn’t just highlight its continuing failure to grasp the urgency of the problem, it also ensures far greater difficulties for its successors, who will have to arrest the problem at home while pressing other major polluters like China and India to act.

With Bush brushing off yesterday's landmark global warming decision by the Supreme Court we continue to recrod for posterity what will no doubt be a legacy of foot-dragging and global warming denial by the Bush administration.

We have seen reports of political interference in global warming science spanning most of Bush's tenure as president.