DCFOUNTAIN.COM

Illustration: azrainman

With “The Dark Knight” opening today to sold-out audiences across the land, this may be as good a time as any to invoke one of the caped crusader’s arch nemeses to ask, “Riddle me this, Batman: What two things do the Earth and the White House have in common?”

Answer: Both are locked in an eternal spin cycle, and both are suffering from rising temperatures caused by the irresponsible actions of their inhabitants.

Indeed, a growing sense of anguish and anxiety seems evident on George W. Bush’s face lately as the solid, impenetrable walls he had erected slowly crumble around him. As one crisis after another unfolds, and an endless stream of former confidants’ tell-all books hit the bookstores, January 20 cannot arrive soon enough, he surely muses, praying that the next terrorist strike will not occur before he has a chance to turn over the keys to his successor.

Probably no crisis better typifies the gross negligence of this administration than the matter of climate change. By responding to the problem as if it were a rival football team instead of the global threat it is, the Bush team has adopted a “best defense is a strong offense” mentality. Unfortunately, they have gone on offense against not the problem but the messenger — attacking not the actual causes of the Earth’s warming but rather the science and near global consensus that validate it.

Those who should be leading the charge to reverse the heating trend and protect the public from its effects have shown instead that they are interested only in protecting obscene corporate profits. Unless these ostrich-folk have a private planet stashed away to which they plan to escape, on some day of reckoning they eventually will find themselves dealing with the aftermath of climate change along with the rest of us.

In the meantime, a dwindling few — mostly isolated within the western edge of Pennsylvania Avenue’s 1600 bock — continue pushing their own flat-Earth notions on the issue. But today the authors of Fuzzy Science (yes, the companion textbook to Fuzzy Math) were revealed as frauds.

At long last, a federal agency finally broke down and Thursday officially relayed the “news” that other governments the world over have been telling their citizens for years: climate change is real, it poses a catastrophic threat to human health on numerous fronts, and it will dramatically alter life as we know it — not just for those yet to come, but much sooner — for many of us, within our own lifetime.

This unexpectedly frank assessment from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in the form of a report, broke a seven-and-a-half-year code of silence within the administration on what Nobel laureate Al Gore has correctly termed “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Yet the White House, natch, disavowed the admission from its own Cabinet agency — much as a parent might dismiss the concerns of a child who suddenly yells during dinner that he smells smoke. Only, no responsible parent would do so. This time, George, the kid is right. The kitchen is on fire.

For most Americans, the real riddle no longer is whether or not the emperor is wearing clothes, but exactly why has he taken them off?

Now we know that, too. It’s getting bloody hot on this planet — not to mention inside the Oval Office. So, who can blame W for shedding a layer or two?

It’s been a few years, but finally, something Bush and the overwhelming majority of Americans can agree on again: January 20 cannot happen soon enough.