Itz News to Me

Is this true? Not really. But if George Bush were the head of the European Union, you know that’s how the headline of this story would read.

But there’s no denying the essential truth of the story: those holier-than-thou Europeans who trash Bush for following Bill Clinton’s example and ignoring the Kyoto Treaty haven’t a chance of meeting their own obligations - and never intended to.

The Kyoto Treaty was always intended as a tool to slow down the U.S. economic juggernaut under the pretense of controlling greenhouse gases. The signers knew that they would never meet their own emissions obligations, but they hoped that American businesses would be forced to spend themselves silly trying meet ours. The intent was to improve the competitive positions of Asian and European companies vis a vis American firms by saddling them with the onerous cost of attempting to achieve impossible emissions goals.

Even Bill Clinton rejected this horrible idea and the Senate defeated it 95-0, but because hating Bush is a way of life not a course of reason: it’s Bush who gets the blame even though Kyoto essentially had been tossed in the wastecan before he ever took office.

It just goes to show that, like so much of the criticism that has been levelled at Bush specifically, and Republicans, in general, - especially where the environment is concerned - has just been so much political smoke…

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