White House says Climate talks beyond platitudes

[rodeodance]

Source: reuters




From: Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

Published October 4, 2007 09:34 AM

White House says Climate talks beyond platitudes


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.-sponsored climate change talks have moved beyond the political positioning and platitudes that can mire such discussions, the top White House environment official told Reuters on Wednesday.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said last week's two-day Washington meeting of the 17 countries that emit the most greenhouse gases featured candid dialogue instead of "the formalistic presentations and set speeches that are typical of these climate discussions."

"It was not hostile but it was frank and we engaged the issue at a level of substance that moved us beyond the platitudes," Connaughton said at the Reuters Environment Summit. "It was intense and it's going to be more intense, because this is hard."

Connaughton disputed news reports in which participants in the talks complained that President George W. Bush seemed isolated in urging voluntary, rather than mandatory, requirements to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.
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THE "AFTER YOU" PROBLEM



Read more: http://www.enn.com/climate/article/23624/print

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The WH----is in constant need to defend/explain itself!

[eppur_se_muova]

1. They've moved on to privatization and corporatization now...

so stop saying they haven't done anything!

[Andy Canuck]

2. Wow

that sounds like the most cliche of platitudes.

[hatrack]

3. True - they don't even come CLOSE to qualifying as platitudes . . .

In fact, if you stuck an air hose up the ass of the White House's pronouncements on climate and the environment, and turned the compressor on full, after about 20 minutes, they might approach the stature of a cliche. Maybe.

But "platitudes". Sorry - miles to go before they can aspire to that.

[Spazito]

4. OMG, for what they are doing to even be platitudes would take

a hell of a lot more substance than what they (and our own l'il cowboy harper) are 'doing'.

Man, they really think the 23% of their base they are catering to are going to save their asses, NOT going to happen!