The July 6-8 summit meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations comes as humanity is drifting toward unparalleled catastrophe. Climate change, a prime focus of the summit, is on track to kill millions of people in the twenty-first century. The victims will die not in the sudden bang of radioactive explosions but in the gradual whimper of environmental collapse, as soaring temperatures and rising seas submerge cities, parch farmlands, crash ecosystems and spread hunger, disease and chaos worldwide.

As summit host, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain has lobbied the heads of government gathering in Scotland to take much stronger action against climate change, a problem his science adviser, Sir David King, has called the greatest danger civilization has faced in 5,000 years. Blair has been pointing out since 2002 that the Kyoto Protocol "is not radical enough." The protocol demands 5 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by industrial countries only. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says a 50 to 70 percent reduction by humanity as a whole is needed. To bridge that ten-fold gap, Blair has urged the G-8 nations, which are responsible for the majority of previous emissions, to endorse an ambitious program of strict timelines and emissions cuts.

But Blair has been unwilling to admit the obvious: His dream of a historic breakthrough on climate will come only if G-8 leaders are willing to defy the Bush Administration and plot their own course. George W. Bush has made it clear he's not interested in doing anything about climate change except study it. For Bush and his right-wing base, the non-existence of climate change is an article of faith, like the non-existence of evolution, and it doesn't matter what scientists say. Nevertheless, Blair insists the United States must be part of any climate accord, arguing, "If you simply exclude America from this equation, we'll never get it done." The result is, Bush gets a veto over the world's progress.

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