Administration Throws Tantrums in Montreal

From Think Progress:

The American delegation staged a dramatic walkout last night in a bid to scuttle the entire U.N. climate change conference in Montreal.

The tantrum continues: “Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity.”

I understand that the Kyoto Protocol has its problems, but the United States needs to take seriously the prospect of global climate change and efforts to more responsibly use the earth's natural resources. While I question whether a former president should speak at an international meeting in opposition to the policies of a sitting president, I like what Bubba had to say (from The New York Times:

Mr. Clinton said countries should pay less attention to establishing global targets for emissions and more to discrete initiatives to advance and disseminate technologies that could greatly reduce emissions in both rich and poor countries.

In a comment clearly directed at the Bush administration, he noted that the United States had adopted a precautionary approach to fighting terrorism. "There is no more important place in the world to apply the principle of precaution than the area of climate change," he said, generating waves of applause.

"I think it's crazy for us to play games with our children's future," Mr. Clinton said. "We know what's happening to the climate, we have a highly predictable set of consequences if we continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we know we have an alternative that will lead us to greater prosperity."