FT: Bush in U-turn on global warming

[DEMON CUNT]

Bush in U-turn on global warming

By Andrew Ward and Edward Luce in Washington and Fiona Harvey in London
Published: May 31 2007 16:06 | Last updated: May 31 2007 19:25

George W. Bush on Thursday unveiled a striking about-face on global warming, calling on the world’s leading economies to join the US in agreeing a global target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions before the end of his term in office.

...

Mr Bush said: “Science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it."

More... (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/32856c56-0f84-11dc-a66f-000b5df10621.html)

Ha ha!

Listen up kids! The talking points have changed! Or maybe he's just pandering?

http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/7616/bushtruthww8.jpg

[knuckleboner]

ah, but there's a caveat.

bush stated he wanted to get an agreement among the 15 largest greenhouse gas producing countries. that's good.

but the rub is what happens if (when) china says, "no thanks." that was the official reason behind the bush administration refusing kyoto.

the real question is, will the bush administration continue through with these measures in the (in my opinion, likely) scenario where china and india don't agree?


so i vote for symbolic pandering...

[Seshmeister]

It's just a clever fucking con move.

By starting a new process led by the US he can try and sidestep the big agreements coming next year which have already been set up amongst most of the rest of the world.

He can then fuck around delay a bit and he's gone, end of term and he hasn't upset his oil friends.

[Seshmeister]

Meanwhile Texas melts and Florida floods...

[knuckleboner]

Originally posted by Seshmeister
Meanwhile Texas melts and Florida floods...

but don't you LIKE global warming?!

i thought it was improving your scottish weather?...

[Ellyllions]

Originally posted by knuckleboner
ah, but there's a caveat.

bush stated he wanted to get an agreement among the 15 largest greenhouse gas producing countries. that's good.

but the rub is what happens if (when) china says, "no thanks." that was the official reason behind the bush administration refusing kyoto.

the real question is, will the bush administration continue through with these measures in the (in my opinion, likely) scenario where china and india don't agree?


so i vote for symbolic pandering...

All true, and I agree....sorta.

See, back when Gore attended Kyoto, while he was still in the air on his way he got a telephone update from the Kyoto and was told that India and China were already an emphatic "no". Their reasoning was that we "the US" had an unfair advantage in that we were already industrialized to our potential and they wanted the opportunity to get to that standard. In their eyes, we should've done the massive change in order to be fair. The cost for us to agree and go forward at that time would've meant something like 6 billion right off the top. So, Gore called Clinton (still not having arrived) and told him what was going on.

Clinton advised Gore to make a good-faith showing, try his best to get China and India to come to some sort of agreement but that he would never (ever) take the agreement before the Senate and Congress for ratification.

So then, the UK stepped in and tried to get the 3 countries to agree to at least a partial compromise. India and China stood firm that the US had an economical unfair advantage. A UK rep did make concessions for them and took a larger percentage than they had originally come to the table with.

Gore does his part, brings the treaty back home. Clinton signs it. Goes before the American public (and the world media) touting that we were in full agreement with the treaty to a point and then tabled the thing. It was never ratified in the US as an active agreement. It was left for the next President to handle...which the Clinton's was sure would be Gore.

When Bush took office and stated that the Kyoto treaty wouldn't work because it was unfair to the US he was only stating in public what Clinton had stated in private to his VP and his Aides.

Like it or not, it is the way of politicians (especially when they're also attorney's by trade). Clinton didn't "lie" about the Kyoto, he did sign it. He just didn't take any further action on it to make it happen because he also felt that it wasn't fair to the US and that it would cripple our economy. Not a good game to play with China.

So, for Bush to now be talking about all of this and making statements that it's time takes me to 2 thoughts:

-another end-term President following a schedule of putting certain issues out for the next President to take care of

or:

-I've heard some rumblings about some serious issues taking place in China that are a real danger to our economy and security...so he might be trying to open any kind dialogue to get a feel for what might be taking place in China.

[Ellyllions]

I've heard that Iran recently cashed in it's US currency for Euros. It wasn't a lot, but now they accept Euros for payment of goods before US currency.

Well, since Iran has done it, China is causing the word to be leaked that they're thinking of doing the same thing. If that happens, economically we're in BIG trouble financially.

I've also heard that there's a rumor that China just purchased most of Russia's special (don't know the exact term) submarines. Of course, they say that they did it to help our the Russians economically. But those particular subs were built during the cold war for one purpose and one purpose only....to effectively detect and destroy US aircraft carriers. Supposedly the most sophisticated and updated aircraft carriers we have.

Then yesterday the reports came out that Putin seems to be going cold on the US even making the statement that we've started an "arms race"....

IF all of this is true, could be a great time to get a phone line to China getting some feelers out to see what's going on. Why not use something like the environment to do so?