That’s the claim regularly made by the media and the administration’s environmental critics. Yet CEI’s Chris Horner begs to differ:
If the U.S. withdrew from Kyoto, what were all of those (28) State Department, EPA and other officials doing at the just-completed 16-25 June, “Subsidiary Body” negotiation in Bonn, in preparation for December’s “COP-10″ in Buenos Aires? In truth, the Bush Administration has withdrawn from neither the climate talks, nor the treaty. President Bush has instead merely continued the Clinton policy of refusing to send the signed Kyoto to the Senate for a vote. Formal rejection by the executive is achieved by renouncing the signature, as President Bush did in fact do regarding the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). No such communication to the United Nations has issued regarding Kyoto, as is readily confirmed by the State Department’s website. Until then, we’re in.
Read the whole thing over at The Commons.