The Climate Saga: Too Much For The Senate, Not Enough For The World

Though there were early indications that the House package of the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill were spurring the development of similar policies abroad, among the Europeans who have already set up a cap and trade system for carbon emissions, the relatively weak standards forced into the bill by Blue Dogs and farm-state Democrats have them looking unkindly at it:

The European hosts of the Group of 8 summit meeting welcome the shift. But the new stance also worries them, in part because they fear that the United States is working toward an independent deal with China outside the global negotiating framework.

President Obama has stated a commitment to addressing climate change. That has been followed by the recent passage by the House of a landmark bill that, if also approved by the Senate, would begin to regulate heat-trapping gases. Those moves have given the Europeans, as well as climate scientists and some environmental groups, hope that the United States will take a leadership role in global talks toward a new climate-change treaty [...]

But Europe is also unhappy with the Obama administration’s reluctance to accept aggressive near-term goals for cutting greenhouse gases and its refusal so far to formally accept language that would limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels [...]

The president and other American policy makers also insist that no deal can effectively reduce emissions unless China, India and other major developing countries are on board. The United States has been pursuing a separate track of climate diplomacy directly with Beijing.

Michael Starbaek Christensen, a senior climate-change official in Denmark, said he was worried that the United States and China — the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world — would cut a separate deal and push the rest of the world into a treaty that did too little to curb emissions.

“I can only encourage Europe to stay in the lead and not let a bilateral U.S.-China relationship take over,” Mr. Christensen said, “because one concern I would have with the U.S.-China relationship is that they would find a lower common denominator.”

The G8 leaders could not even agree on the same aspirational targets of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 that George Bush agreed to in Japan at the G8 in 2008. Put simply, the rest of the developed world finds the US targets too low. I agree with them, but of course our political process is almost uniquely wired against coming to a solution that matches the needs in the science. Plus we have an entire political party composed of denialists from the Exxon Mobil school of Energy Policy.

In the first Senate hearing today on clean energy legislation supported by President Barack Obama, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) compared the Senate to the “ExxonMobil board room.” Whitehouse expressed his concern that the United States would be left behind in the clean energy race, saying, “I do not want to see American industries at the back of that parade with a broom.” Addressing the Obama Cabinet members before him — Ken Salazar, Stephen Chu, Tom Vilsack, and Lisa Jackson — Whitehouse apologized for the denial of man-made climate change by his fellow senators:

"We know that this is probably — along with the ExxonMobil board room — the last place that sober people debate whether or not these problems are real, but we intend to work with you anyway, and we hope to give you strong legislative support if we can."

As I've often said, with climate change being a "boiling frog," intangible kind of concern, it's hard for me to believe that a Democrat from Idaho, for example, will face negative consequences from his No vote on Waxman-Markey. I'd like to be wrong about that. But the dynamics just haven't moved in the right direction yet.

As to the Senate, where the climate bill will almost certainly weaken again, Nate Silver postulates that there are 62-66 potential votes for legislation, and Bill Scher sees some possibilities among the GOP as well. I'm significantly more skeptical, especially with the lack of mass grassroots action, which just has not materialized.

...There's now a tentative agreement on a more limited plan to not let global temperature rise above 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Listen To The Hippies This Time

Looks like the leaders of the eight largest economies agree with the hippies, at least in part, that the economy still faces rough patches and additional stimulus could still be necessary.

G8 leaders believe the world economy still faces "significant risks" and may need further help, according to summit draft documents that also suggest failure to agree climate change goals for 2050 [...]

Documents seen by Reuters before the G8 summit began on Wednesday cautioned that "significant risks remain to economic and financial stability" while "exit strategies" from pro-growth packages should be unwound only "once recovery is assured."

"Before there is talk of additional stimulus, I would urge all leaders to focus first on making sure the stimulus that has been announced actually gets delivered," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said.

That chimed with comments from the International Monetary Fund, which said it believed the global economy was starting to pull out of recession but recovery would be sluggish and policies needed to remain supportive.

Harper isn't wrong, the stimulus in the queue must get out. But recovery has not yet been assured, and so the smart move would be to prepare for some contingency where more public money has to go into the economy.

It's interesting that everyone has whitewashed the debate from early this year.

During the initial discussion of the stimulus, the debate was framed almost entirely as a debate between Obama and those who said the stimulus was too big; the voices of those saying it was too small were largely frozen out. And they still are — if it weren’t for my position on the Times op-ed page, there would be hardly any major outlet for Keynesian concerns.

And here’s the thing: in this case, there isn’t any hidden evidence — you can’t argue that the CIA knows something the rest of us don’t. And the voices calling for stronger stimulus are, may I say, sorta kinda respectable — several Nobelists in the bunch, plus a large fraction of the prominent economists who predicted the housing crash before it happened.

But somehow, the pro-stimulus people are unpersons. Who makes these decisions?

I don't think Krugman wrote that without knowing the answer.

Can I Write The Sack Of Rome II?

I've been reading The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi by Alexander Stille, which is a rollicking read, about one of the greatest monsters currently running the world, Italy's richest man, who basically cheated his way to billions, bought his way into the Prime Minister's chair, and saved his own ass from criminal charges time and again by having his handpicked Parliament give him amnesty. It's really good, but I keep thinking that I'm reading the original but missing out on the sequel. Berlusconi returned to power this year, and immediately sank into a sex scandal, a divorce, a scheme to run a bunch of starlets as candidates for Parliament to get notoreity, and a general series of embarrassments for the people of Italy. Now this is all coming to a head with a potentially ultimate ignominy: getting kicked out of the G8.

Preparations for Wednesday's G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.

In the last few weeks before the summit, and in the absence of any substantive initiatives on the agenda, the US has taken control. Washington has organised "sherpa calls" (conference calls among senior officials) in a last-ditch bid to inject purpose into the meeting.

"For another country to organise the sherpa calls is just unprecedented. It's a nuclear option," said one senior G8 member state official. "The Italians have been just awful. There have been no processes and no planning."

"The G8 is a club, and clubs have membership dues. Italy has not been paying them," said a European official involved in the summit preparations.

The behind-the-scenes grumbling has gone as far as suggestions that Italy could be pushed out of the G8 or any successor group. One possibility being floated in European capitals is that Spain, which has higher per capita national income and gives a greater percentage of GDP in aid, would take Italy's place [...]

Silvio Berlusconi has come in for harsh criticism for delivering only 3% of development aid promises made four years ago, and for planning cuts of more than 50% in Italy's overseas aid budget.

This really would be a delicious come-uppance for Berlusconi, the mogul who turned to politics to "save Italy" and has only succeeded in tossing it into the toilet. He's holding the summit in L'Aquila, which basically crumbled to the ground in an earthquake three months ago, and the region is still having aftershocks. Both the images of Berlusconi showing off his country by proudly displaying rubble, and the idea of the Prime Minister pronouncing Italy's stability in an area where the ground is still moving have rich figurative possibilities.

Stupidest article of the Bush era

There have been a lot of incidents of appallingly bad journalism over the past eight years: those relentlessly focused on trivialities, stories inventing fake scandals out of whole cloth, the ones amplifying Bush lies and cheerleading for war. Yet for some reason, this story by Dan Eggen and Paul Kane in Sunday's Washington Post strikes me as the most unbelievable, factually incorrect and just plain stupidest article of the Bush era.

Headline:

Recent Political Wins Smell of Compromise

Lately, President Employs a Little-Used Tool

I don't know if you're aware of it, but getting full immunity for lawbreaking, expanded unchecked surveillance powers, and no-strings funding for endless war in Iraq is the result of compromise!

The Very Serious Journalists at the Post told me so.

The decider has become the compromiser.

President Bush has racked up a series of significant political victories in recent weeks, on surveillance reform, war funding and an international agreement on global warming, but only after engaging in the kind of conciliation with opponents that his administration has often avoided.

This must be the kind of conciliation where you threaten to veto everything unless you get exactly what you want and then the other side gives it to you. That is, after all, the best kind of conciliation.

Two weeks ago, for example, Bush signed a $162 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he hailed as a product of bipartisan cooperation. But the final legislation was far more expensive than Bush had said he would accept, and it included expanded G.I. Bill college benefits and other provisions that he had opposed.

The compromise, you see, was Bush accepting MORE money for war than he wanted. He wanted $100 billion and received $162 billion. There are absolutely no strings on this money, not even the fake "benchmarks" that were imposed last year. The domestic priorities attached to the bill are absolutely no different from last year, when the Democrats inserted minimum wage increases to the war funding bill. So this compromising compromiser got everything he wanted for an endless war where dozens of Iraqis and Americans continue to die every day.

A new surveillance bill signed into law Thursday also marked a significant victory for Bush, largely because the White House won legal immunity for telecommunications firms that helped in eavesdropping after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Yet even there, the compromise legislation included reforms that the administration had initially opposed, including language making clear that the measure is the exclusive legal authority for government spying. The changes allowed the bill to easily overcome opposition from Democratic leaders and civil liberties groups.

This is a bill that the President's lackeys in Congress have admitted gives them more than they ever expected to receive, a better deal that they managed to squeeze out of the Republican-led 109th Congress of Denny Hastert and Bill Frist. Take a look at this detailed flowchart to understand that this new law allows for mass untargeted surveillance of every piece of data between foreign and US recipients, without any requirement of probable cause, without even supplying a phone number or email address attached to the surveillance, and with the added bonus of hiding the lawbreaking warrantless wiretapping program approved by the President and immunizing their criminal activity.

This was a "compromise."

Then there's this whopper:

Bush's conciliatory mood extended to the Group of Eight summit last week in Japan, where the United States for the first time joined the other major industrialized countries in agreeing to try to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Although environmental groups said the deal lacked vital specifics, it marked a long journey for a U.S. president who came to office questioning the science of climate change.

Just TODAY, the White House announced they would defy a Supreme Court ruling and refuse to regulate greenhouse gases through the EPA, disavowing the agency's own reports:

To defer compliance with the Supreme Court's demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials' congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.

And the G8 pledge does nothing, it has no targets, provides no numbers, and would not bind any member nation to any policy. Furthermore, does this sound like some conciliatory figure?

President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

It is almost impossible to believe that any journalistic enterprise could come up with such dreck on their news pages, attributing these massive rationalizations and misinterpretations as fact. But this is the Beltway mindset, that "bipartisanship" is supremely valued and always just, and if the dirty hippies are mad about it then Washington must have done its job properly. So they literally just make shit up to feed the narrative of Bush as some transactional compromising figure instead of pushing a radical agenda based on supreme executive power. This is the same guy threatening to veto this:

The House approved a homeless veterans housing bill overwhelmingly Wednesday, even though White House advisers warned they'd urge President Bush to veto it.

The bill sponsored by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, authorizes spending $200 million on housing and services for veterans, requires 20,000 rental vouchers a year for low-income housing for veterans and authorizes $1 million for grants to nonprofit groups to provide housing and services for veterans.

The bill, which passed 412-9, also creates a job in the Department of Housing and Urban Development for someone to coordinate with Veterans Affairs on homelessness and make regular reports to Congress on the issue.

He wants to veto a bill designed to house homeless veterans. Yet the Very Serious Journalists of Washington wants to tell me that there's some great change here. They would love to see that so they can put their relentless cheerleading for this deeply unpopular oaf behind them, so they can believe the system worked, and so everyone can go have cocktails at the bar safe in the knowledge that the betters in the Beltway are doing the glorious and bipartisan work of the people.

The truth is that there has been a hostile takeover at all levels of government that is undermining the very fabric of the nation. But the Very Serious Journalists don't want you to peek behind the curtain. If I didn't know better, I'd think the writers of this fable were Mr. and Mrs. Aesop.

I May Throw Up

The right is all up in arms that Barack Obama dared to suggest that Americans might want to learn more than one language. George Bush then tried to prove him right with this Great Moment in Presidential Pride:

“Amigo! Amigo!” Mr. Bush called out cheerily in Spanish when he spotted the Italian prime minister. “How you doing, Silvio? Good to see you!” Later, the president wondered about his former Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin. “Did Putin come to see you since I saw you?” he asked Mr. Berlusconi. (He had not.)

He then left the G8 summit with these parting words:

President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then flew off and happily signed the FISA bill that Congress stooped so low to provide him.

This is another shitty day.

Oh, and what Driftglass said.

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.

How Many Years Until 100 Years?

The unstoppable whine from the RNC over Democratic message dominance on John McCain's "100 years in Iraq" comments has now morphed into "you stole footage from a terrorist Michael Moore!"

[T]he Republican National Committee has learned that the ad features footage from Michael Moore’s 2004 conspiracy theory, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

According to ABC News, the ad features “an IED blowing up near US soldiers,” an image ABC confirms that was used in “Fahrenheit 9/11.” It is no coincidence that the same Democrat [sic] advertising firm that produced this ad also was responsible for producing over $6.5 million worth of Democrat [sic] political advertising using themes from “Fahrenheit 9/11″ in 2004.

Since the RNC doesn't produce ads with anything but that one shot of a gay immigrant terrorist performing an abortion while filing a lawsuit to prevent wiretapping (I think Zapruder had it on one of his old reels), they might not know that there's such a thing as stock footage libraries, and anyone can buy clips from them, and that's what Moore did, and that's what the DNC did. Actually the one time the RNC did experience the purchase of stock footage, they appeared to get it from Osama's Terrorist Training Video & Tackle Shop.

If one were so inclined, one could point to the RNC ad from 2006 that used footage of Osama bin Laden taken from Al-Jazeera and use it to question whether the RNC is too closed aligned with Al-Jazeera. That would be silly, but one could do so, right?

“Looks like the shoes on the other footage,” e-mailed Mike Gehrke, self-described “DNC Research Director and Joke Plagiarist.” “We won’t be intimidated by a candidate desperately trying to avoid his own record — or his lawyers.”

Of course, focusing on trivialities like footage origins is just what the RNC would like to do, as a way to deflect the impact of McCain's comments. As much as they'd like to spin them into some fantasy of a 100-year peaceful presence in the heart of the Middle East (you know, like Korea or Japan or Germany), the bottom line is, as Ron Brownstein notes in an excellent piece, McCain hasn't explained what all those troops would be doing in Iraq, and how long he'd be willing to keep combat forces there until such a peaceful presence would be reached.

First, if McCain doesn't envision a 100-year American front-line combat presence in Iraq, how long is he willing to keep U.S. forces in that role? So far, all he has said is that the United States should withdraw only if it concludes that the Iraq mission is unachievable or when it has achieved success, which he defines as the establishment of "a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state." [...]

McCain has not said when, but he has pledged that Iraqi units will eventually assume the major combat responsibility. That prompts the next question McCain should address: What would then become the mission for the U.S. forces he wants to maintain in Iraq? McCain hasn't specified. But he has suggested that their job would be to deter external aggression, much as in South Korea where our troops "served as a buffer against invasion from North Korea."

In that example, however, the U.S. and South Korea agreed that North Korea posed a threat. The American troop presence in Germany and Japan long rested on a similar agreement about the potential danger from the Soviet Union, notes Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution senior fellow in foreign policy.

Although the U.S. considers Iran the most pressing external danger to Iraq, "the overwhelming majority of Iraqis don't see Iran as a threat," Daalder says. "They see it as a partner." If a threat from Iran isn't the motivation, Al Qaeda might provide the most likely justification for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq. But if Al Qaeda remains a threat there, conditions would likely not meet McCain's standard that American troops are no longer at risk.

McCain and the RNC's explanation is gobbledygook, and while a significant portion of the traditional media has lapped it up, Brownstein raises the crucial questions. McCain wouldn't have combat forces leave Iraq until it was stable, and won't say what would meet the standard of stability, so until he does, it's natural to assume he would spend 100 years there or more trying to find the pony. He spins the comments by describing a desired end state without explaining how we get there or when. Oh, and the price tag for such a commitment? A couple trillion dollars.

And this of course is almost the least troubling of McCain's foreign policy stances, the fact that he finds it OK to go to war for oil and the fact that he wants to kick Russia out of the G8 and essentially restart the Cold War are just as dangerous. And also fantastical.

The Group of Eight, or G-8, as it’s popularly known, makes decisions by consensus, so no single nation can kick out another. Most experts say the six other countries — Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada — would never agree to toss Russia, given their close economic ties to their neighbor. A senior U.S. official who deals with Russia policy said that even Moscow would have to approve of its own ouster, given how the G-8 works.

”It’s not even a theoretical discussion. It’s an impossible discussion,” said the senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. “It’s just a dumb thing.”

McCain '08: It's just a dumb thing.

Substantial Cuts

Some agreement.

World leaders agreed on Thursday to pursue "substantial" but unspecified cuts in greenhouse gases and pledged to reach a United Nations deal by 2009 on long-term measures to fight global warming.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, hosting the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) in the seaside Baltic resort town of Heiligendamm, had hoped to gain commitments from member countries to slash emissions by 50 percent by 2050.

Instead, the club of industrialized nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- agreed that "resolute and concerted international action" on climate change was urgently needed.

It's an agreement to have another meeting to have another agreement. It's a death by a thousand cuts. Substantial cuts.

And then, apparently Vlad Putin got sweet-talked into accepting the American missile defense plan that doesn't work.

U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin met for the first time following a series of diplomatic clashes that some analysts said heralded a new Cold War.

At the meeting, Putin proposed using a radar system in Azerbaijan to develop a missile shield as an alternative to a disputed U.S. plan to base it in the Czech Republic and Poland.

"We can do this automatically, and hence the whole system which is being built as a result will cover not only part of Europe but entire Europe without an exception," Putin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.

So if you funnel money into a Soviet satellite state, we cool. That's the message there.

If you read between the lines at this G8 Summit, you see that the rest of the world continues to get rolled by the Bush Administration. At least the Democrats aren't alone...

I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

George Bush and Tony Blair need to just own up to the world that they're gay for each other. This is a tolerant society, nobody's going to mind. And it'll be a load off of the mind of that beard Laura:

U.S. President George W. Bush bid a reluctant farewell to his close friend and ally Tony Blair on Thursday as the two met at the British prime minister's final G8 summit.

"This is the last meeting I will have had with him as prime minister. It's a nostalgic moment for me," Bush told reporters, standing beside Blair after bilateral talks at the gathering of the world's top powers in Germany.

"I'm sorry it's come to be, but that's what happens in life. We'll move on," he added.

"Maybe we'll go off to some mountain in Wyoming every year or so for a fishing vacation, you know, just us boys, a mini-summit. We'll wear our cowboy hats and boots and clear some brush. I'd sure like to clear his brush."

Here's the hilarious punchline, apparently the love in unrequited:

Blair, asked later if he was equally as sad as Bush, said he was too enmeshed in the details of tackling climate change at the G8 to think about his imminent departure.

"To be absolutely frank, I'm so into the difference between various linking systems of emissions trading that I haven't the time to feel nostalgic or anything else," Blair said.

"Stupid science, gettin' in the way of our love! Dad-gum global warmin'!"

For such a "steely-eyed hero," there's never been someone more unnecessary maudlin than George Bush. He sounds like a character from a Douglas Sirk 1950s melodrama. Yo, Blair, want some advice? Lock your door in Heiligendamm at night. This could go all Fatal Atraction very quickly.

"Look, I boiled a rabbit for ya, Blair! Don't leave me, Blair! I'm all alone here!"

Environmental Bush

People were skeptical when Bush did this abrupt move to call on 15 nations to set targets to reduce greenhouse gases. Skeptical because the maneuver pre-empts what other G8 nations wanted to implement, not more talks as Bush called for but a real standard for reducing emissions. Indeed this is part of a pattern.

New penalties against Sudan — check. More dollars to fight AIDS in Africa — check. A respected internationalist to lead the World Bank — check. Friendly words about tackling global warming — check.

George Bush is ready to go to Europe.

His bag packed with a pre-emptive agenda he spent all week detailing, the president leaves Monday on a trip that will take him to six countries in eight days. Bush journeys from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, with the centerpiece of his travels a three-day summit in Germany with leaders from Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia.

The president made certain not to arrive empty-handed.

"The operative phrase ... that sums up the week is when the president said, 'We are a compassionate nation,'" said Charles Kupchan, director of Europe studies for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Most of Bush's presidency has been about "hard power" — fighting terrorism and waging the Iraq war — and still is. But heading into the Group of Eight meetings, he chose a different focus.

"He's cycling back to this nicer, kinder America," Kupchan said. "This is an agenda that is much more popular in Europe than the talk about fighting al-Qaida and chasing the Taliban through the mountains of Konar province" in Afghanistan, on the eastern border with Pakistan.

In one sense, Bush is making this move because he has to in order to get anything done internationally. Perhaps that's a good thing. But in the other sense, this is merely an attempt to get out in front of issues so they have the least impact possible to Republican causes and allies. The global warming talks are the best example. Bush is trying to talk the issue to death.

Jim Connaughton, the president's adviser on the environment [...] briefed reporters on the plan at noon.

"Will the new framework consist of binding commitments or voluntary commitments?" asked CBS News's Jim Axelrod.

"In this instance, you have a long-term, aspirational goal," Connaughton answered.

Aspirational goal? Like having the body you want without diet or exercise? Or getting rich without working?

"I'm confused," Axelrod said. "Does that mean there will be targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions, and that everybody will be making binding commitments?"

"The commitment at the international level will be to a long-term, aspirational goal," the Bush aide repeated.

Axelrod had his answer. "Voluntary," he concluded.

"Well," said Connaughton, "I want to be careful about the word 'voluntary.' "

This isn't a plan but a series of talks that may or may not arrive at a plan. If you looked closely at the other "plans" Bush announced this week I'm certain you'd see the same thing. Nancy Pelosi rightly called Bush in denial about the issue, and vowed to pass tough initiatives through the Congress. Of course, there's been a lot of talk and somewhat less action. We have to push harder to ensure some real action on climate change before it's too late. I'm more in favor of a carbon tax, while what they're discussing in the Congress is more like mandatory emissions caps (I don't know if they'll incorporate a market-based cap and trade system as well. Whatever they come up with, it's better than talking about it while the globe sizzles.