Doublespeaking The Environment

More is less and less is more. Sometimes I feel like we are living 1984 every single day under George Bush. The President and his Administration have become pros at saying one thing while doing the opposite. The latest episode deals with climate change and Bush snubbing his nose at the United Nation's upcoming conference on what to do with our deteriorating planet. Instead of working together with other countries, Bush is having his own conference-of-one to talk about what he isn't going to do.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Bush’s aides say that the parallel meeting does not compete against the United Nations’ process — hijacking it, as his critics charge. They say that Mr. Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world’s emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the United States, to set its own policies rather than having limits imposed by binding international treaty.

“It’s our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be,” said James L. Connaughton, the president’s chief environmental adviser.

Mr. Bush’s approach sets the stage for a new round of diplomatic confrontation. And it raises the prospect that he could once again put the United States in the position of objecting to any binding international agreement intended to slow or reverse the emissions linked to rising temperatures.

Whether Mr. Bush prevails remains to be seen, but the effort is the last chance in his presidency to shape the debate after years of being excoriated for keeping the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement that limits the emissions of greenhouse gases from most industrialized countries.

Actually, this is just a re-enactment of Kyoto. While other countries are beginning to meet the demands set at Kyoto and are looking forward to more stringent goals, we are going backwards. Snubbing Kyoto at the beginning of his Presidency showed the world that we are not committed to ebbing global warming and this diplomatic error is just another testament to where his priorities lie.

At least we have less than sixteen months of this torture to go.