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U.S. sets low expectations for this week's climate meeting

Posted at 10:13 AM on 28 Jan 2008

Leaders from the world's major economies will fly big planes to Honolulu this week for a chat about reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions. Ironicalicious! Even better, the Bush administration, which is hosting the meeting, isn't expecting much out of it. "I think these will be iterative discussions, which the initial goal will be to lay out a variety of options without holding any country to a particular proposal," says James Connaughton of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "We're trying to do this in a collaborative way, rather than in the more classic 'You bring your number, I bring my number, and we start kicking them around.'" Did he really just say, "Specific goals are wack"? The mind boggles.

source: Reuters

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Comments: (1 comment)

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Punting the ball

Whatever the motivation,

either a way to circumvent Bali and convince other industrialized nations to go into climate change policies in a way that satisfies the U.S.,
or a gathering intent on pressuring China and India into being equals in responsibility on any agreement forthcoming,

there is one thing these meetings will definitely do:

These meetings will buy time for GW Bush to not do a damn thing during the last year of his presidency. This is known as "punting the ball". Forget national action during 2008. 2008 is about states and cities and the market taking action.

Oh and can we take the hypocrisy out of the criticism for the travel CO2 hit for this meeting? Bali and Kyoto and Rio anyone? This has normally been a stupid denier tactic. The possibility of progress and even just plubicity about the climate change problem is WELL WORTH the CO2 footprint a a handful of people going to Hawaii.

-Christopher

by christophersj at 4:28 PM on 28 Jan 2008

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