Bush and the Ridiculous Climate Situation

Relacionado con este post de Ramiro sobre la reunión del G8 y el “cambio climático”, Bush y los EEUU son los villanos de la película, pero ese país es que el que, por lejos, hizo más por reducir las emisiones en los últimos años entre las economías industrializadas:


United Nations and the European Union are realizing their government-run experiment in climate control is a mess, one that's incidentally failed to reduce carbon emissions. They've also understood that if they want the biggest players on board -- the U.S., China, India -- they need an approach that balances economic growth with feel-good environmentalism...Yesterday's G-8 agreement acknowledged those realities and tolled Kyoto's death knell. Mr. Bush, 1; sanctimonious greens, 0...President Bush's approach is...[to] allow economies to grow, along the way inspiring new technologies and new forms of energy that lower CO2 emissions...Take your pick. Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3 percentage points over 1995 to 2000. Only two countries are on track to meet targets...meanwhile in the U.S., under the president's oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were eight percentage points lower than in the prior period."
So here we have a ridiculous situation: the U.S. is being castigated by environmentalists and most world leaders even though it has done the most to reduce greenhouse gases. Isn't that almost always the case? When it comes to pulling our weight in global matters that are considered "good" it is the U.S. which usually far exceeds other countries, but it gets scant recognition for its good deeds. One case that comes to mind is that the U.S. provides, according to the New York Times, "more than half the food aid that feeds hungry people around the world..."