George Bush has invited Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and South Korea to send representatives to Washington in September.
From Global Warming Watch
President Bush is organising a September conference and inviting the world’s major polluters to develop strategies to hold onto business as usual for as long as possible.I’ll eat my Grand PooBah hat, Freemasons Apron, and publish the secret handshake on my blog, if they actually agree to reduce emissions. In theory they should — they claim to want to contribute.
“The United States is committed to collaborating with other major economies to agree on a detailed contribution for a new global framework by the end of 2008, which would contribute to a global agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by 2009,” Bush said in his invitation.But here’s the rub.
“In addition, we expect to place special emphasis on how major economies can, in close cooperation with the private sector, accelerate the development and deployment of clean technologies, a critical component of an effective global approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
It’s about investing more into yet-to-be-developed ‘clean coal’ technology, or more tax-subsidised, long-term nuclear projects. Not about reducing emissions in the here-and-now at all. In other words, business-as-usual, for the polluters. Viewed against their record profits, it’s galling.