Gridlock News

President Bush invited delegates from the worlds leading greenhouse gas emitters on Wednesday to discuss the effect of global climate change as well as ways to curb the effects. Scores of protestors gathered outside the event calling it an attempt to circumnavigate the United Nations.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice mentioned in a roundabout way that climate change cannot be dealt with as only an environmental matter due to the crippling economic effects of forms of reduction. The talks this week are just that, discussion. The United Nations Kyoto Protocol is set to expire in 2012 and this conference is claimed to be an opening for discussion of future recommendations and suggestions for individual nations to curb climate change in a manner that will be consistent with their continued growth.

Kyoto has a number of obvious flaws, and George Bush like Bill Clinton has made much of those flaws to avoid the protocol.  But at the same time, Bush has done nothing to enter the discussions and provide any substantive alternative.  The result is that even for those Republicans that are dead set against the Kyoto Protocol and what it stands for, by not stepping forward and offering a plausible alternative solution, George Bush has led us by not leading us towards the point where future leaders will have to accept something derived from Kyoto, which the US had no hand in shaping.

It's like sending your realtor out to find you a house without looking yourself.  If you limit yourself to 10 houses and tell your realtor that the first 9 are terrible, you are going to get stuck with the tenth house(I know that analogy is a bit nuts, but so is the manner in which the White House has been run for the last 7 years).  President Bush has failed to get engaged on this issue (like many others) and as such he has not been a leader.  He has been a decider.  He has emphatically decided to abdicate the decision, the  dialogue and the future to someone else, possibly even a Democrat.