Chilly reception to warming

Grist magazine ("gloom and doom with a sense of humor") has a good item on the Kyoto talks in Milan, Italy, including the US role there:

The opening act starred Paula Dobriansky, the Bush administration's leading representative at the conference and undersecretary of state for global affairs, who published an op-ed in the Financial Times on Monday denouncing the treaty. "[T]he Kyoto Protocol [is] an unrealistic and ever-tightening regulatory straitjacket, curtailing energy consumption," she wrote.

Dobriansky went on to laud U.S. climate change "policy" - which is not enforced, but voluntary, and which hinges on the development of "breakthrough technologies" (most of them fossil fuel-based or reliant on carbon sequestration, which has not been proven effective). The technologies, she argued, will allow the United States to reduce emissions while continuing its upward surge in energy consumption.

According to Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate change program at the World Wildlife Fund and a participant in the Milan conference, "Dobriansky's position clearly demonstrates the kind of obstructionist, uncooperative, unilateral, you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us attitude that has already seriously degraded U.S. international relations." Worse, she said, the Bush administration has sent a large delegation of about 100 officials (from agencies ranging from the Department of Agriculture to the State Department) who are evidently trying to sabotage the talks - deliberately stalling and interrupting the negotiations.

You know the old saying, if ya can't join 'em, beat 'em.

Footnote: The US is not the only offender; the same item makes note of the statement by Andrei Illarionov, a high-level advisor to Vladimir Putin that "Of course, in its current form, this protocol cannot be ratified." Putin's office denied that later the same day, saying Russia does not yet have a clear position on the Kyoto Protocol." This is the interesting part:

An executive of a U.S. environmental organization who is at the conference and asked to remain anonymous said that, according to scuttlebutt in Milan, Illarionov may have personal ties to an American company that influenced his deceptive remark. "Illarionov has reportedly had extensive dealings with Exxon - a company that has a long-running track record of trying to defeat Kyoto," said the executive.

Ah, it feels just like home. I tell ya, bubba, those Rooskies are gettin' more Americanized every day.