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Warming Trends (NY Times, 8/03/03)

Ever since George Bush renounced the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming two years ago, the industrialized world has been waiting patiently for signs that Americans are ready to focus on the pressing issue of climate change. Lately some American politicians have begun to take the matter more seriously, even if Mr. Bush has not.

Last week Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman extracted a pledge from their colleagues to hold a floor vote later this year on a promising and, by Senate standards, adventurous proposal for mandatory controls on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. Meanwhile, 10 Northeastern governors agreed to devise a regional strategy to reduce these same emissions, regardless of what Washington does. [...]

McCain-Lieberman is not likely to pass, absent an unexpected conversion on the issue by Mr. Bush and senior Republicans. But every senator will now be required to take a stand one way or the other on an issue of great public concern, an issue on which the world has spoken clearly but Congress has remained irresponsibly silent for too long.

Silent? The Senate voted a sense of the Senate resolution against the Kyoto treaty 95-0 in 1997--some five years before the Times thinks George Bush killed it. How much clearer can you get than zero votes in favor? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 3, 2003 9:54 AM