Q&A: James Hansen James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies, on why CO2 should be declared a pollutant.
Mother Jones: What will be the hardest thing to fix in the Bush
administration's legacy to science? James Hansen: The hardest
thing to fix will be the result of Bush reneging on his campaign
promise to declare CO2 from power plants as a pollutant. It is
practically impossible to retrieve the CO2 once it has been
emitted. Much of it stays in the air more than 1,000 years.
Because of his broken promise many coal-fired power plants were
built, that would not otherwise have been built. Very hard to
fix—there is a strong reluctance to bulldoze a new power plant
that cost more than a billion dollars to build. Our great-
grandchildren will suffer because of his broken promise.