Bush administration caves to world opinion on global warming

Shame on the Bush administration; once again it puts world opinion ahead of American interests.

Either Bush sent people without an American spine to Bali or Bush himself has lost his. In any case, we accepted the false premise man and CO2 are responsible for global warming and agreed to go forward with international calls for ‘doing something’ to retard the planet’s warming. It doesn’t matter that we have not accepted so-called ‘caps’ on emissions, yet; we have sold out to the global warming alarmists after years of resisting leftists call for redistribution of wealth.

According to the New York Times (and who can doubt that liberal ‘organ’) - “The deal came after the United States, facing sharp verbal attacks in a final open-door negotiating session, reversed its opposition to a last-minute amendment by India. 'We've listened very closely too many of our colleagues here during these two weeks, but especially to what has been said in this hall today,' Paula Dobriansky, who led the American delegation, told the other assembled delegates. 'We will go forward and join consensus."

George W. has removed all doubts that he has turned his presidency over to George H. W. since it was the elder Bush who in his final days as president signed onto the “Framework Convention on Climate Change” to deal with 'climate dangers'. Doubtlessly with his father’s blessing, George the younger agreed that the United States would accept the need for “urgency” in addressing global warming and that “deep cuts in global emissions will be required”.

The US agreement includes the need for some commitments by China and India to reduce greenhouse emissions but says nothing about how the world community will make them do this since unlike the United States, they don’t give a whit about world opinion. The purpose of the agreement signed onto by our fearless leader is to assure continuity of the Kyoto abomination, which took effect in 2005 and is the only existing addendum to the original climate treaty. Emissions caps in the Kyoto deal expire in 2012, and environmentalist greenies insist that by 2009 the reduction of emissions begins by starting the process of setting new emission limits and to create markets in emissions credits. This is essential to their goal of transferring wealth from developed countries to those still in the Neanderthal age by giving rich countries the ‘opportunity’ to receive carbon credit toward their targets by investing in “climate-friendly projects in poor countries”.

The Bush administration has been pressed by the Democrat-controlled congress, led by the giant among liberals, Senator Barbara Boxer, to take action on global warming and her strident calls are gaining momentum. Even presidential candidates from both parties are, or seem to, accept the ‘need’ for action on global warming consistent with the screeds of the Europeans. In an ‘et tu Bru`te’, last April the United States Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's contention that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and ordered it to re-examine the case for regulating carbon dioxide from vehicles, thus confirming actions of many states that are mandating caps on greenhouse gases.

The US cave-in began after European nations threatened to boycott separate talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii to be sponsored by the United Nations. After US negotiators relented, Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, who had led the criticism of the United States, said: "The climate in the climate convention has changed a little bit. It's true that during the last night and during the negotiations America was more flexible than in the first part of the conference. We very much appreciate this. Not only for the Americans but also other parties."

It’s not clear how much the American self flagellation by Al Gore affected the Bush administration change of heart and the new agreement, but after Gore declared that the United States was "principally responsible for obstructing progress" in Bali, he urged delegates to agree to an open-ended deal that could be enhanced after Mr. Bush left office in January 2009. "Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now," Mr. Gore ‘said to loud applause’ (again, the New York Times commentary). "You must anticipate that."

As indicated, China and India, despite projections that they will soon become the dominant sources of climate-warming gases, continue to refuse to accept limits on their emissions. However this did not keep the global warming adherents from agreeing that “developed countries”, i.e., the United States, would compensate developing countries for protecting their rain forests, which environmentalists described as “an innovative effort to mitigate global warming”. (Destruction of rain forests are a major source of global warming, don’t you know.) How countries with large rain forests, like Indonesia and Brazil, would be compensated has not been fully worked out, but you can be sure they will be well compensated by US tax payers.

In what some may see as the ‘coupe de grace’, United Nations officials said part of the financing would come from developed countries through aid and other financing would come from carbon credits traded under the Kyoto pact; I guess this is meant to assuage those that think the US taxpayers will pay the whole bill for ‘saving the planet’.