About drawing the line in the sand...reminded me of that scene in the film Madagascar, where the animals are in a very serious predicament (lost on an island they don't know, far away from home), and the only thing they can do is squabble childishly, drawing lines in the sand. For some reason, the picture of someone (from the US) childishly squabbling instead of paying attention to the serious predicament reminds me of the current situation...odd...

The thing I don't understand is why the US gets away with acting like a hard-to-get, beautiful, rich girl: "you change everything to fit what I want, and maybe I'll agree to sign it." Couldn't anyone call their bluff, like Gore seemed to be trying to do?

As for 'prejudging', the definition I found for that was as follows:
To judge beforehand without possessing adequate evidence.

So what evidence do they want?

Sigh. But well done for applauding. By the way, I missed the specific article in any English-language media, but a local paper here translated and paraphrased Gore as saying, not just what is quoted above, but to leave a space open for Bush's successor. Does anyone know if he was really that explicit? Or did the words go through various misadventures en route?

If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?

Thanks for sharing! But I'm still unclear from your essay as to why the U.S. administration did what they did.

My take on it is that the people who make up and support the Bush administration are simply incapable of imagining the world, outside of their narrow instrumental politics. That is, if the world goes to hell and the ice sheets melt, well, at least the Republicans had another "victory" to snub their opponents with.

I think, though, on a  deeper level, more so than the Democrats, the Republican are beholden to Big Oil and Big Coal. Politics is the shadow of big business, as Dewey said all those years ago. It's not that Americans are any more stupid that other peoples (they also favor government action), but that their government (and media) is effectively run by business interests.

Let's keep the record straight. Gore was elected in 2000. Bush was apointed.

Amazingdrx, that's a great article.  95 percent of baseline power from wind with storage of heat and cold and using 10 percent of cars which would be plugins.  It makes sense.

Although I could see some nervous electricity grid operators saying, please, please stay home and generate electricity instead of going to the movies or whatever.  

So, the U.S. has declared total war on the biosphere and common sense.

Perhaps the rest of the world should answer it by dropping (not the bomb, but) their dollar assets. Perhaps a collapse of the U.S. economy would force emission reductions like in East Germany when communism collaped there. Ecologico-economists should ponder that possible solution.

Well, you shot down all the explanations for Bushco intransigence that immediately occur. So here are two wild ones:
It's already too late to prevent cataclysmic change and the well-informed at the apex of the world's most powerful government know it. The overwhelming majority will die. These guys have plans for a domed enclave, or a city in orbit, in which they and their chosen will survive. They need more money to build it.
I know, pretty far-fetched. Here's another, suggested by the part about how the US delegate actually opposed efforts to reduce emissions on the part of other countries: the US government has been taken over by lizard-like aliens and they want to anti-terraform the Earth to better resemble their hotter, stormier homeworld. In addition to the fact that all the actions of the Bush administartion are consonant with efforts to increase the greenhouse effect as fast as possible, my other evidence for this theory is Dick Cheney. Do you believe that guy is human? I want a DNA test.
All right, now for the grammar issue. It isn't correct to say "corporations who..." It should be "corporations which". But this issue goes way beyond grammar. The author's (typically) erroneous worldview is revealed elsewhere in the piece: "the US" is said to want or say things; and then the word "we" is used to talk about what the criminal representing the Bush administration has done. None of us was consulted, or ever will be--we are not responsible for what these people do. We are responsible for trying to put a stop to it, but many of us have worked for years to get them impeached, to get investigations of their many crimes, to contact "our" representatives in Washington to get responsible policy--all to no avail. Governments are not people, and we need not identify with what is done by representatives of the US government.
Similar muddy language and thinking surround corporations. Corporations are not people, and they are not LIKE people--they are like machines. There are no "good" or "bad" corporations, and they cannot be reformed. They are machines for making money, and if we tolerate their continued existence at all we must get them under human control, not attempt to use moral suasion on them. That would be about as effective as trying to reason with your car. True, statements are made "by corporations"--what does that mean? If a corporation states that it loves forests, for example, it means two things: that the people in the PR department decided it would help the corporate image best if they said this in these words---and ususally, it means that the corporation is currently raping forests.
Perhaps the greatest problem hampering human attempts to deal with our mounting crises is our inability to make collective decisions well. It would help to at least think about this more clearly.

Very well put!

The lazy habit of using the name for an entire nation to represent a small number of decision-makers goes back, I guess, to the ancient Greek historians, who could write things like "The Athenians invaded Sicily," without bothering to make it clear that not all Athenians were responsible for the decision or took part in the actual expedition.

Better that, though, than the concept of collective guilt that the ancient Israelites were so fond of.  We may well wonder, e.g., if all the inhabitants of the Earth, minus Noah and his family and a few animals, deserved to be drowned, or if all the first-born of Egypt deserved to be slain by the Angel of Death.

And yet, let us remember that there are some Americans who are ready to explain the deadly attacks of 9/11, and deadly attacks on Americans in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, as expressions of God's wrath against all the American people, who have apparently sinned and displeased Him by not completely restricting women's reproductive rights, and by not crushing homosexuality.

I cannot tell you how bad I would feel, were God to direct an asteroid to smash into us in NYC, on account of the crimes of Bush/Cheney & Co.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

Some reasons are given to explain why the USA (supposedly the Bush administration) was not ready to support other countries conclusion.

But the most important reason (possible) was left out, perhaps inadvertently. The USA has the greatest economy and therefore the most difficult job in curtailing its undesired emmissions into the global atmosphere. The leaders also know other countries can "promise", thinking they can actually do anything in their countries to reduce bad emmissions. Other countries will not be pointed at, if they fail. But the USA will certainly be singled out if it fails quantitatively. The USA has been the world's greatest leader in environmental protection, so it's not like they should now be thought-of "the problem". Anything the USA signs or doesn't makes news - because they have the greatest operation. Other countries just "promise", then see what happens....
Just a thought (missing).

MeltingIceGeoid Honolulu, Hawaii, USA