screw the planet; we’ll take the dough
As reported by Jeremy Lovell in the Vancouver edition of the Globe and Mail, a leaked draft of the United States’ final communique for next month’s G8 summit in Germany reveals that the US wants to remove references to the urgency of global warming and the need for a new global deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.
According to the draft, the US supports deletion of the following paragraphs:
“We firmly agree that resolute and concerted international action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and sustain our common basis of living.”
“To this end we will, in the face of the UN Climate Change Conference at the end of this year, send a clear message on the further development of the international regime to combat climate change.”
The deletions are part of a concerted effort by the United States, which rejected Kyoto in 2001 and has ever since tried to undermine it, to water down the tone and content of the G8 summit declaration, Lovell reports.