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So Sayeth the Goracle

By Mark I Posted in Al Gore | Bali Conference | Environment | Global Warming | Kyoto | Liberals | The Goracle — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

"Environmental Champion and Nobel Laureate" Al Gore, as he was described on NPR News this morning flew from Oslo Norway (no doubt commercial), where he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, to Bali, Indonesia for an address to the U.N. climate change conference being held there. Gore’s speech likely raised sea levels by an inch or two for all the hot air he emitted.

The Green Goracle™, never one to miss a chance to blame the United States in general and George Bush in particular for just about anything, told the delegates that the U.S. was “principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.” Gore might have done better to look toward his friends in the European Union and the global environmental movement when assigning blame. The United States at least wants to talk about real emissions reduction goals, while the rest of the world is paying lip service to standards they are not meeting.

UPDATE: The White House responds to Gore's Comments below the fold.

Read on…

With Australia’s new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, ratifying the Kyoto Protocols, the United States has been left as the last major industrialized nation to refuse to sign on to the agreement. But what if it did? Most of the countries who have ratified Kyoto will not meet their mandatory emissions reductions by the time the pact expires in 2012. Even newly green Australia announced after ratifying Kyoto that it did not support the most ambitious emissions reductions targets being discussed in Bali; preferring to give itself until 2050 to cut emissions 60% from 1990 levels.

Meanwhile, the United States delegation at the Bali conference is attempting to get 16 of the world’s major economic powers, including China--now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases--and India, who are not subject to Kyoto, to meet in Washington next month to discuss concrete measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. And the Europeans are balking.

”No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting. This is the clear position of the EU. I do not know what we should talk about if there is no target."

In other words, unless the United States agrees to subject itself to a set of meaningless goals, that no one in the world can meet or is meeting, then the environmentally pious Europeans will refuse to even talk about another possible approach. It’s their way or the rising seas. Who’s that obstructing progress Mr. Gore?

On the contrary, the United States, Japan, and their partner governments are actually standing for real progress on climate change. By calling the major economies and polluters together and discussing individual nation determined measures to reduce emissions, the Bush Administration seeks to get commitments from countries that might actually be realized. Gore, Europeans, and the environmental left insist on negotiating a new set of mandatory standards that no one will meet, all the while exempting themselves from meeting the harshest reduction targets. Those are reserved for the United States. What more evidence is needed to demonstrate that Al Gore and the global climate change movement view progress on the issue as intrinsically tied to curtailing American economic growth?

UPDATE: White House Press secretary Dana Perino was asked about Gore's comments at today's press briefing and had the following response:

Q: Okay, Bali it is. In the Vice President's remarks -- former Vice President Gore saying that the United States is principally responsible for blocking progress there. What's your response?

MS. PERINO: I can't understand where that comes from, since the point of the conference was to establish a new framework, and a post-2012 framework so that we can have discussions and negotiations that will lead to, within the next year, a specific number. That was the purpose of the Bali conference. And so it wasn't just the United States who expressed surprise that in the draft resolution there's a specific number for a cut. And we did object to that because we're not prepared at this moment to do that. We said we wanted to have that discussion and that negotiation over the next year.

Q: But Yvo de Boer is saying that if you don't get specific in the road map then the whole thing can fall apart.

MS. PERINO: But there is a road map and part of the road map is to get to specifics, and that's what the negotiations are for, in the future. And the President is committed to reaching a consensus on this; he's the one who brought the major economies to Washington, D.C. on September 30th. And that was a significant step forward. Remember, Kyoto did not pass the United States Senate by any -- not even close; it was 97-0. We've come a long way.

And I would submit to you that this President is somebody who has put in place just a ton of initiatives to attack climate change, both from a private sector standpoint -- there are some mandatory rules; we are moving forward, we are supporting CAFE increases for SUVs and light trucks, which we've already done twice. We have a proposal for a third increase. We're supporting the automobile increase that Terry brought up earlier in regards to CAFE. And the methane-to-markets partnership, the Asian American partnership -- there's just a ton that we have done that was not done in the previous administration.

So we have moved forward while we have not set a specific target for a cut. We have said we are willing to do that, but we're willing to do that in the framework of post-2012, after Kyoto. And the Bali Conference, the specific purpose of Bali was to set out what that framework would be, not to identify a specific number.

The full press briefing can be found here.