Over the weekend, US President George W Bush hosted a conferance on climate change, bringing together the world's largest emitters in an effort to undermine the Kyoto framework and replace it with something more acceptable to the US fossil fuel industry (i.e. something which will allow them to continue business as usual without having to face any cost or political fallout for their pollution).
Fortunately for the world, it was a complete and utter failure. Bush proposed replacing the binding emissions targets of Kyoto with "flexible" and "voluntary" "targets" (meaning none at all), effectively turning the clock back fifteen years to 1992. This position was rejected by pretty much everyone there. One diplomat even went so far as to label the entire meeting a charade, designed to allow Bush to posture to ignorant Americans that he is "leading the world" on climate change, while in reality doing no such thing.
Unfortunately, Bush seems intent on continuing his efforts, and is reportedly planning a summit of world leaders to address the issue. But unless his position shifts significantly, I really don't think there's any point in anybody else turning up. On this issue the Americans are pretty much a write-off, so its best to simply ignore them, work out a deal amongst ourselves, and then bring them in when a sane administration is elected in 2008.
