How true. During seven and a half years of the Republican Bush administration and also during the past 18 months of a Congress controlled by Democrats, almost no meaningful action has been taken to deal with the looming disasters that human-caused climate change is beginning to inflict on the Earth. Legislation sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., the product of more than a year of bipartisan cajoling, in the end went nowhere.

Instead of taking the lead with limits on greenhouse gases in the United States, Bush has unreasonably worked against the efforts of last year's worldwide convention on climate change by downplaying the dire predictions of climate scientists and lobbying against mandated limits on CO2.

Somebody else apparently will have to take the initiative to start talks among the United States and other countries that are the major producers of greenhouse-gas emissions, the primary cause of increasing global temperatures. And who better than our own governor, who was formerly the ambassador to Singapore and U.S. trade representative for East Asia and who speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese?

Huntsman, who was elected president of the governors association, helped arrange for Chinese officials to attend the association's meetings last weekend in order to start a dialogue about energy efficiency, climate-change predictions and ways to address the drought, coastal flooding and food shortages that are likely to come. The Utah governor wants to have the same discussions with Indian officials.

Although, under the U.S. Constitution, the executive branch is given responsibility to make foreign policy and deal with foreign governments on important issues, this president has done nothing to start a dialogue with other countries on global warming and how to mitigate its effects.

And, we have to say, that may be a blessing, considering how his actions have eroded formerly friendly feelings toward us worldwide.

We applaud Huntsman for continuing to push for action on climate change even as Washington hides its head in the sand.