Speaking in Mozambique last night, Mr Blair promised a personal attempt to persuade President Bush to drop American objections to ratifying the Kyoto agreement on climate change.The Prime Minister staked his environmental reputation on a promise to ensure that world leaders who have rejected the climate change protocol see sense.
Also this:
After two days of intense negotiations, ministers from the 190 counties taking part in the talks failed to reach agreement on tackling the subsidies paid by the West to their farmers, after France refused to agree to any proposals to reduce them.
Everyone seems to fixate on Bush as the chief barrier to getting Kyoto ratified, as if somehow that process is a rubber stamp. All he'd have to do is to send it to the Senate and poof! instant ratification.
They're ignoring the effect of the Byrd-Hagel resolution, passed in 1997, which strongly opposed the Kyoto accord. It passed 95-0.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/KyotoSenate.html
Posted by: Steven Den Beste on September 02, 2002