Half-Measures

The G8 went ahead and set something that sounds like a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050. If you read along, however, you realize that this is not a target at all, there are no numbers involved, no clear interim steps, nothing that would bind any member nation.

Environmental campaign group WWF said the leaders had ducked their responsibilities.

"The G8 are responsible for 62 percent of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere, which makes them the main culprit of climate change and the biggest part of the problem," WWF said shortly after the communique was issued.

"WWF finds it pathetic that they still duck their historic responsibility...," the campaign group said in a statement.

Of course you're not going to get that out of the United States, which privately continues to advance a denialist policy based on concealment of the magnitude of the problem. Jason Burnett, the senior adviser in the EPA on climate change before resigning last month, wrote to Barbara Boxer today to reveal that it was the Barnacle, Dick Cheney, who was responsible for deleting Congressional testimony from the CDC on the public health effects of the warming climate, "fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases." Last month we learned that the Bush Administration decided not to open an email from the EPA that included conclusions for regulating greenhouse gases as pollutants. So expecting some commitment to solving the problem from these two oilmen is not realistic.

As for Burnett, the whistleblower who sent the letter to Senator Boxer? Well, you can get a sense of which Presidential candidate would make such a commitment when you learn that Burnett has gone to work for Barack Obama.