WashPost Set Bush Up as Reason Kyoto Not Followed by US

A long and carefully-worded December 14 Washington Post article about this week's climate change conference in Bali portrayed President Bush as the reason that the United States is not following Kyoto and the sole roadblock to saving Mother Earth.

On top of that, even while presenting the eco-blame-game's backstory, the reporter never mentioned the Clinton/Gore administration's involvement or that they set the standard for how America handles Kyoto.

After an article full of finger-pointing at Bush and quotes by enviro-saint and full-time jet-setter Al Gore, WashPost reporter Juliet Eilperin misrepresented Kyoto (bold mine throughout):

The United States took part in drafting the Kyoto pact, but it was repudiated by Bush in 2001.

Denmarks's climate and energy minister, Connie Hedegaard, said in an interview Thursday that including short-term emissions reduction targets of at least 25 percent in any final agreement here remains "one of the bottom lines the European Union has got.

Here we go again. “Repudiated” does mean, in part, “to refuse to recognize," but that sentence still isn't exactly true.

Here's Wikipedia's explanation of America's history with Kyoto (and a link to OpinionJournal.com for more):

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

(...)

The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the Kyoto principles, but because of the exemption granted to China (the world's second largest emitter of carbon dioxide).

The way Eilperin wrote with Clintonian parsing, it seems as if Kyoto was in effect until, suddenly in 2001 Bush “repudiated” it. Usually the media inaccurately claim Bush “rejected” Kyoto, but this time Eilperin chose “repudiated,” which allowed her to be technically correct while conveying the same message.

Missing from the article is that the previous Clinton/Gore administration refused to ratify the pact until China was included. Neither Bush nor Clinton could have ratified it if they chose, they are barred by Byrd-Hagel from doing so. I guess it fits the storyline better to omit all of that information, although a few sentences could have done it.

No mention that China passed the US and is now the number one carbon producer, and India will take the number three spot in 2015. Both joined Kyoto but are not bound by it.

In addition, global warming activists divulged at Bali that the real goal is wealth redistribution from industrialized nations to developing ones, not carbon reduction.

Lynn contributes to NewsBusters. She can be reached at tvisgoodforyou2 AT yahoo DOT com.