The Hidden Persuader?

Tony Blair on Bush and global warming, on the occasion of this week’s G-8 Summit: “I can persuade George Bush on climate change.”

As I remember, he’s had similar ambitions before. Let’s take a trip back to the aftermath of G-8 2005:

“The G8 communiqué on climate change is a victory by President Bush on behalf of all the people of the world, especially the poor in developing countries,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming & International Environmental Policy. “The Kyoto Protocol’s dead-end approach of mandatory reductions in energy consumption was hardly mentioned. Instead, the leaders at the G8 summit have recognized that global warming must be put in the context of other, more serious challenges.”

While some observers had hoped that Summit host Tony Blair would leverage his relationship with the President to pull the U.S. closer to the European position, the final agreement makes it clear that the opposite is the case. Particularly now that the majority of the nations pledged to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol are realizing that they will fail to reach their reduction targets, the consensus among industrialized nations has shifted definitively against the agenda of energy poverty.