Will Blair Lose George's Friendship On Climate Issues? - Reuters

[hatrack]

Will he gamble that four-cent stamp? Will Charles Atlas' system of Dynamic Tension make him Hero Of The Beach?

LONDON - "Tony Blair will get short shrift from George W. Bush on global warming when he leads the G8 in 2005 but the fight with Washington might help him shed the "poodle" tag he got over support for the Iraq war, analysts say. Blair has pledged to put climate change at the top of his agenda for the 12 months starting in January that Britain has the helm of the Group of Eight rich nations. But his high-profile commitment contrasts sharply with the Bush administration which has refused to sign up to the benchmark Kyoto treaty to combat global warming.

"I have always thought that it was a very high risk strategy for Tony Blair to put climate change so high on the G8's agenda," Victor Bulmer-Thomas, director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs think-tank, told Reuters. "The question is -- can he persuade the United States to move closer to the European view on the environment, and the answer is 'no,'" he added.

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Environmentalists insist that now is payback time. "It is time Blair used his diplomatic capital and persuaded the United States to agree to international commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions," said Greenpeace head Stephen Tindale. "But the signs are not good. At the moment it looks like Blair is all mouth and no trousers on climate change and that he is a serial flunker of challenges. He has yet to stand up to Bush on anything," he told Reuters. And if Blair can't do it, no one can, Friends of the Earth head Tony Juniper said.

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But the world's greatest polluter does not even accept that man-made climate change is happening and Blair's officials have been negotiating to try to produce some agreement on the science of climate change. "If they could persuade the Bush administration to accept that man-made climate change is happening it would be a small but welcome step," Tindale said. "But even that is a long shot." "Anything is better than nothing. If they could persuade them to sign up to the science it would make some of their existing policies look bizarre if not insane," said Juniper."

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http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/28595/story.htm

[ConcernedNonpartisan]

1. Profit comes before pollution control

Unfortunately, profit has always been the motivator. This not only pertains to the global warming but to all aspects of life.

The President and Congress (regardless which party is in control) will not come to grips with global warming and/or other pollution control problems until there is profit in doing so or it spills over into their neighborhood.


The majority of all bills proposed/submitted/passed in congress are WRITTEN BY the industry lobbyists.

It is time for Congress to start writing their own legislation based on "what is right" and not on what is profitable.