More Climate Emissions

Nairobi is hosting the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is meant to be looking into about a post-Kyoto Protocol world and what is to be done about it. Already the meeting has been an enormous success on two fronts. Foreign activists managed to rent members of Kenya's colourful tribes, in some cases probable pre-literate ones and parade them around with "Wanted, George Bush The Toxic Texan" placards. This will guarantee more fauxphoto opportunities for the MSM. Next, every news media in Kenya and internationally has been able to spin stories about Bush "renouncing Kyoto" to stoke anti-Americanism.

Of course, it was Bill Clinton who shelved the Kyoto Protocol in 1999, before Bush was even elected, after the US senate voted 95-0 that they would never ratify it. True, Clinton, in a typically showbiz gesture, signed an intent of the Kyoto Protocol in Rio in 1998. Democratic senator Byrd, from Clinton's own party, co-sponsored the motion in the senate.

The good news is that China will surpass the USA as the world's largest emitter of CO2 sometime in 2009. Will anyone in the world media notice?

There is no doubt that climate change has been damaging Africa's human viability for the past 14,000 years of inter-glacial warming, and also no contention that such warming has quickened and will have a devastating effect on marginal Africa. The grand irony is that African countries are queuing up to sell all the CO2 laden oil and mineral products they can to China, who will soon be polluting them out of existence.

African environmentalists might be doing wise things like insisting that any energy and minerals sold to China as raw materials be subject to verifiable lower CO2 emissions. Instead most of them are too busy blaming America.

No wonder the US senate resolution that passed so resoundingly in 1999 repudiating the Kyoto Protocol said it:

"would not ratify the Protocol unless rapidly developing countries such as China were included in its requirements to reduce greenhouse gases. The Clinton Administration announced it would not send the treaty to the Senate for ratification."

Meanwhile The Guardian, haven of America-bashing, announces that the oh-so-Green Europeans have totally failed to meet their Kyoto obligations. We can say one thing for George Bush, he sure gets around.