A shift in White House rhetoric on climate change?

For years, the Bush administration has been unwilling to commit the United States to a binding international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, going as far as to officially reject the Kyoto Protocol over the claim that it would harm the economy and because it doesn't require developing nations to take actions to reduce emissions. (Congress hasn't been much help either. In 1999, the Senate voted 95-0 to pass a resolution to the effect that the US wouldn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol if emerging economies that emit growing amounts of greenhouse gases weren't also bound by the treaty to act, although some Senators are now calling for the US to ratify a new treaty.)

In December, 2007, during negotiations in Bali to forge a roadmap for creating an international treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol when its first phase expires in 2012, US negotiators again attempted to prevent meaningful action on climate change. Not only did the US refuse to sign a document that set specific goals for emissions reductions, but the US also nearly refused to support financing the transfer of clean technology to developing countries to facilitate their reductions. The reason? India proposed that actions by developed countries to finance and encourage development and transfer of clean technology for developing countries must be "measurable, reportable and verifiable." The US actually got booed for its obstinance.

Today, though, I incredulously read the following in a New York Times article:

"The official, James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the United States could accept a binding treaty if it included mandatory steps by China and other big developing countries as well.

An acceptable pact, he said, would have all the world’s economic powerhouses, established or emerging, agree to a long-term goal for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions at some point, and commit to take measurable, verifiable steps domestically in the short term."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/world/europe/27climate.html?ex=1204779600&en=5105c9c4a9d3c943&ei=5070

Instead of blatant rejection of an international agreement that would legally bind the US to reduce its emissions, the White House is now proposing that the US could in fact be party to such a treaty. My initial reaction was to jump for joy. It seemed that the Bush administration has undergone a sea change on climate change.

Then, I realized what this means: the Bush administration remains blind to the fact that the US, as the world's largest per capita emitter - the US represents about 5 percent of the world population and emits 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases - and as the world's largest historical emitter, must take responsibility for a century-and-a-half of unfettered pollution.

Of course I agree that climate change is a global problem that requires that all nations take action, but the US must own up to its emissions history and agree to act before it can in good faith require that any other nation do so.