Pirate's Cove

So, perusing the Raleigh News and Observer, and way back near the end of section A-1 is a cute little article about the Kyoto Protocol and protests for it:

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities worldwide Saturday to demand urgent action on global warming as delegates continued their work at an international climate change conference to review and update the Kyoto Protocol.

Police said about 7,000 people marched in downtown Montreal — some dressed as polar bears. Five environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Climate Crisis Coalition, delivered a petition signed by 600,000 Americans to the U.S. Consulate in Montreal urging President Bush and Congress to help slow global warming.

600K American signatures, huh? Yet not delivered to anyone IN the USA. How about that?

But, the AP writer, Phil Couvrette, tells a little lie:

Bush has been widely criticized for pulling out of the treaty, which binds industrialized nations to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The United States — which spews out nearly 25 percent of the world’s carbon emissions — was the target of many demonstrators Saturday.

I wasn’t aware that the USA official became part of the Kyoto Protocol. Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say:

The United States, although a signatory to the protocol, has neither ratified nor withdrawn from the protocol. The protocol is non-binding over the United States until ratified.

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, 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. Aware of the Senate’s view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification.

Let me repeat that: "the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification." Nor did the Bush Administration. And Al Gore symbolically signing it has about as much worth as Kool Whip on cow shit.

So, we have and AP writer repeating a Democratic and world wide lefty meme, that Bush pulled the US out of the Protocol. Yet, that is a blatant lie. We were never official participants to start with. If the world wants to blame anyone, then that person should be Bill Clinton, since our participation in Kyoto ended in his admin. But, that would be disingenuous in itself.

As for Bush, he stated

This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world’s. The world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. India and Germany are among the top emitters. Yet, India was also exempt from Kyoto. . . . America’s unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. . . . . Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

So, why should America take it on the chin? And why does the AP allow a blatant falsehood to be printed? Is it any wonder that confidence in the media has been going steadily down?