Bush administration acts like spoiled child

Acting like spoiled children, the Bush team pouted, stamped its feet, and stormed out of the room at the world climate talks in Canada yesterday.

MONTREAL, Dec. 9 - Two weeks of treaty talks on global warming neared an end today with the world's current and projected leaders in emissions of greenhouse gases, the United States and China, still refusing to take any mandatory steps to avoid dangerous climate change.

The Bush administration was sharply criticized by environmental groups for walking out of a round of informal discussions shortly after midnight that were aimed at finding new ways of curbing gases beyond steps taken so far.

The walkout was widely seen here as the capstone of two weeks of American efforts to prevent any fresh initiatives from being discussed.

Earlier, the Bush delegation had threatened to pull out of the meetings if former president Clinton was allowed to speak. As New York Magazine puts it:

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.

Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said. The threat set in motion a flurry of frantic back-channel negotiations between conference organizers and aides to Bush and Clinton that lasted into the night on Thursday, and at one point Clinton flatly told his advisers that he was going to pull out and not deliver the speech, the source said.

“It’s just astounding,” the source told New York Magazine. “It came through loud and clear from the Bush people—they wouldn’t sign the deal if Clinton were allowed to speak.”

Of course, there was never any chance in hell that the Bush team would have signed onto the Kyoto protocols. So, the conference organizers decided to call the bluff, and Clinton did speak.