On display, in the rejection this week of G8/EU climate policy positions, in the utterly bizarre sophistry from NASA Administrator Griffin, and in Bush's speech today, is well thought-out strategic communications plan to simultaneously reinforce the distrust of international agreements as unfair, reinforce doubt about human responsibility for climate change, and yet reinforce American leadership to address it. Nowhere in sight is a coordinated response from dysfunctional environmental and social justice communities. No one is connecting the dots, calling them out, exposing their strategy. No one is raising any kind of ruckus. The only conclusion to draw is that thee is no climate movement in this country, just an inchoate choir content to delude ourselves about progress through our daily fix of self-selected, self-reinforcing RSS feeds.  Where is the coordinated action? Where is the "movement's" rapid response team? Where is the full-page ad in tomorrows WSJ screaming "HOW DARE YOU, PRESIDENT BUSH!" signed by real leaders? We are being totally outflanked.

Rereading, I realize I didn't tie my previous remarks very closely to David's reference to liberalizing trade in "clean energy technology".

Among the goods included on the draft lists for accellerated trade liberalization at the WTO are things like solar cells, wind turbines, solar water heaters, LCD lights, ...

You'd be surprised how high import tariffs are on things like solar water heaters -- even (indeed, especially) in countries with sunny climates.

The Bush goal is to lock in his horrific policies for as long as possible after he and his minions are out of office.  Consistent with that, he really does want a treaty in place before he leaves -- the weakest possible one, set up so that a future administration will have a hard time improving the situation very quickly.

A related example of this is locking the moon/Mars stuff into the budget while gutting the Earth observation missions.  This is damage that will take years to reverse.  While we're on this subject, I think it's an excellent litmus test for the Dems.  Will they be able to produce a NASA budget that properly funds the satellites and reduces the interplanetary stuff to the small-scale research level where it belongs?  Unfortunately, as it stands now I'm going to have to predict that they they'll give Bush most of what he wants this year and next.

They're also trying to lock in a permanent war on terror, but that's another subject.

You establish that China and India are obligated to pledge GHG reductions equal to the U.S. and other developed countries, despite the fact that the developed countries are responsible for the vast bulk of the GHG already in the atmosphere, and still far exceed China and India in per-capita emissions.

I would like an analogy from sports or the schoolyard to illustrate to my friends why the waiting-on-China-and-India game is not cool. My imagination is failing me. Any suggestions?

Hi
Let's not underestimate the number of international meetings that have actually occurred on climate change. The most recent COP was #12, and it was held in Nairobi last November. Of course, that doesn't even account for the technical meetings, which occur at a rate of at least 4 a year. Not sure if all these meetings are helping, but it does seem arrogant to propose a whole new series of them will.