No doubt many of you are aware that the UN held a global climate change summit in Montreal this past week. And no doubt, the end result of that conference will not surprise you in the least:
MONTREAL Dec 10, 2005 — More than 150 nations agreed Saturday to launch formal talks on mandatory post-2012 reductions in greenhouse gases talks that will exclude an unwilling United States.
For its part the Bush administration, which rejects the emissions cutbacks of the current Kyoto Protocol, accepted only a watered-down proposal to enter an exploratory global “dialogue” on future steps to combat climate change. That proposal specifically rules out “negotiations leading to new commitments.”
The parallel tracks represented a mixed result for the pivotal two-week U.N. conference on global warming, doing little to close the climate gap between Washington on one side, and Europe, Japan and other supporters of the Kyoto Protocol on the other.
This was the conference at which former President Bill Clinton spoke on Friday, calling the Bush administration’s claim that reducing greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming would damage the U.S. economy flat wrong.
So, this story in New York Magazine (courtesy Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo) about what Bush tried to pull with respect to Clinton’s speech at the climate summit shouldn’t surprise you either:
Bush Threatens U.N. Over Clinton Climate Speech
by Greg Sargent
Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today [ed. note: Friday] in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity.
Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said.
The threat set in motion a flurry of frantic back-channel negotiations between conference organizers and aides to Bush and Clinton that lasted into the night on Thursday, and at one point Clinton flatly told his advisers that he was going to pull out and not deliver the speech, the source said.
“It’s just astounding,” the source told New York Magazine. “It came through loud and clear from the Bush people—they wouldn’t sign the deal if Clinton were allowed to speak.” Clinton spokesman Jay Carson confirmed the dustup took place and that the former president had decided not to go out of fear of harming the negotiations, but Carson declined to comment further.
But the organizers of the summit decided to stand up to the bully — er, I mean Bush administration:
“But the organizers of the conference didn’t want to accept a Bush-administration dictum. They asked Clinton that he go ahead with the speech. “The organizers decided to call the administration’s bluff,” the source said. “They said, ‘We’re gonna push [the Bush people] back on this.’”
Several hours went by, and at the Clinton Foundation’s holiday party on Thursday night, the former president and his aides still thought they weren’t going to Montreal. “The staff that was supposed to go with him had canceled their travel plans,” the source said.
At around 8:30 p.m., organizers called Clinton aides and said that they’d successfully called the bluff of Bush officials, adding that Bush’s aides had backed off and indicated that Clinton’s appearance wouldn’t in fact have adverse diplomatic consequences.
Of course, then Bush refused to enter into negotiations on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, but I’m sure that wasn’t the result of Clinton’s speech. I have no doubt that was the plan all along.
Neither Bush nor Clinton come off particularly well in this; Bush for trying to bully the UN because he was afraid of what Clinton might say, and Clinton for looking like a wimp in almost backing down. Thank god the organizers of the Montreal summit had enough backbone to do the right thing.