Mugging the G8: leaders know that Bush's new climate change proposal will lead to nowhere

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_hertsgaard/2007/06/climate_bluff.html

Calling Bush's bluff
The other G8 leaders know that Bush's new climate change proposal will lead to nowhere, but will they call his bluff at next week's meeting?

Mark Hertsgaard

Will his fellow G8 leaders finally call George Bush's bluff on climate change when they gather next week in Germany for their annual summit? Or will Tony Blair, Angela Merkel and other G8 leaders continue to put diplomatic niceties ahead of the need to act now against the accelerating climate crisis?

At each of the past two G8 summits, all of the assembled leaders except for Bush were ready to sign an agreement requiring mandatory, sizable cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The reason no such "tough targets" were agreed to, according to Sir David King, the British government's chief science adviser, is that "we would not have got all signatures on the document". The Bush administration simply refused to accept anything stronger than rhetorical expressions of concern and non-binding calls for unspecified "action". Rather than isolate Bush, the other G8 leaders backed down.

Now, it appears that the White House is again trying to derail progress. This time, as described in Bush's May 31 speech, the US is proposing to lead a separate round of international talks that will seek to develop non-binding - White House environmental aide James Connaughton calls them "aspirational" - targets for unspecified emissions cuts in the distant future.

The other G8 leaders know full well that Bush's proposal is a road to nowhere. The question is, what are they going to do about it? Will they go on the record next week in favor of a meaningful commitment to reduce emissions - and dare Bush to oppose it in front of the rest of the world? Or will they once again back down and let the White House continue to weaken the fight against climate change?

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http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/bush-mugging-the-g8-20070631

George Bush: Mugging the G8
Posted by johns on 1 June 2007.

Written by John Sauven for Comment is Free.

So this is it. After years of denial, evasion and hostility George Bush has finally been forced to play defence on climate change. It’s good news, right? Tony Blair called the President’s speech yesterday "a big step forward". Well I call it a disaster. Yesterday afternoon George Bush committed a squalid street mugging on the G8 process and the Kyoto Protocol, and Tony Blair just stood behind him grinning.

Bush's proposal – to develop a non-binding set of global emissions reduction targets by the end of 2008 – is a classic spoiler, intended to show his domestic audience and the wider world that the US is taking the issue seriously. The administration knows it has no place to hide and so, like so many times before, it has announced a plan to create the impression of action, a pathetic attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the world and an increasingly concerned US electorate.

The Bush administration’s “new climate initiative” ignores both the scientific facts and the hard earned experience of the last 15 years: voluntary measures do not work. The physics of the task we face is clear: global emissions must peak in the next 10 to 15 years and be drastically cut after that. In terms of the politics, the G8 are responsible historically for over 80 per cent of the climate change we witness today and still emit over 40 per cent of all global emissions now. They are therefore morally and legally bound to act first and act firmly. In order to achieve a global emission cut of 50 per cent, the G8 must cut their own emissions by at least 80-90 per cent by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels). Anything less will be neither adequate nor fair and certainly not safe.

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