This Washington Post article conveys in short and sweet style how serious the U.S.’s refusal in Bali to accept emissions caps is.
Europe: frustrated, vowing to boycott Bush’s distracter tactic, the “major economies” meetings he’s hosting on global warming. Brazil—home to the world’s largest intact forest—threatening not to comply with rules that only apply to developing countries.
Most disturbing of all, Americans support carbon emissions caps because they’re the only way of fending off catastrophic climate change.
As Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister for climate and energy, put it, the targets don’t come from “figures taken at random,” she said. Rather, the 25 percent by 2020 “reports very specifically back to what the IPCC tells us.”
Compare the sanity of that remark—we’re doing what the best scientists tell us we have to—to the childish churlishness of this one, made by James L. Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, explaining why the U.S. refuses to do the right thing and accept the caps: “We will lead. The U.S. will lead. But leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.”
Despite Americans’ political will, our government is standing in the way of the best documented solution for the greatest problem the world has ever faced.
