This is hilarious. For years we have been told by GWHs that President Bush was RISKING THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET! by rejecting Kyoto—the current global warming treaty that sets modest restrictions on carbon emissions. (Most signatory nations have not met those goals, but these deals are often for talk as much as performance.) Indeed, Secondhand Smokette and I once lunched with a well connected French diplomat in Paris, who stunned us by saying that he (and his colleagues) weren’t really mad with B about Iraq, but Kyoto!
But now, Obama has taken precisely the same approach as Bush to Kyoto. From the story:
But once more [in Cancun], as at the Copenhagen summit, negotiators won’t produce a sweeping deal to succeed the relatively modest Kyoto Protocol after 2012, one that would slash greenhouse gases to curb climate change.
The United States has long refused to join Kyoto, which requires limited emissions reductions by richer nations, and whose commitments expire in 2012. The United States complained the accord would hurt its economy and should have mandated actions as well by such emerging economies as China and India. Washington’s climate envoy, Todd Stern, repeated that position in Cancun on Wednesday, saying the United States won’t sign up to any legally binding climate pact unless it applies to “all the major countries,” including China and India.
That was the very reasoning behind Bush pulling the USA out of Kyoto.
So, where’s the outrage? If Bush was CAUSING THE END OF THE WORLD! by rejecting Kyoto, why isn’t Obama? Isn’t it amazing how the hatred disappears over the same policy when the political party of the presidency changes from R to D?
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