2009 cannot come soon enough
Today's Washington Post has an article about the Bush administration's attempt to weaken a G-8 declaration on global warming:
A draft proposal dated April 2007 that is being debated in Bonn, Germany, this weekend by senior officials of the Group of Eight includes a pledge to limit the global temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as an agreement to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
The United States is seeking to strike that section, the documents show.
The White House is also trying to strike language which acknowledges the UN as the appropriate forum and vehicle for addressing climate change, apparently since the UN is part of the whole black helicopter one-world-government conspiracy, or the tool of the Antichrist or something.
Meanwhile, outside the fevered paranoia of the White House, the world continues to heat up. The rest of the world gets it, but the White House wants to gut the G-8 declaration so that it becomes meaningless:
They also proposed striking one of the document's opening phrases, which says, "We underline that tackling climate change is an imperative, not a choice. We firmly agree that resolute and concerted international action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and sustain our common basis of living."
[...]
Bush administration officials are also resisting calls for efficiency targets in the declaration, in particular a sentence that reads, "Therefore we will increase the energy efficiency of our economies so that energy consumption by 2020 will be at least 30 percent lower compared to a business-as-usual scenario."
January 2009 cannot come soon enough.