The Independent on George Bush and the environment:
“In the mid-1990s, under Bill Clinton, the US began to take a lead in cutting greenhouse gases. Mr Clinton’s vice-president, Al Gore, himself an environmentalist with a well-regarded book, Earth in the Balance,led the US delegation at the conference in Kyoto in December 1997 which drew up the first binding cutback schedule. Mr Gore actually went a lot farther than the US State Department thought was wise.
He committed America to cuts so big they could only be achieved through what was in effect licensed cheating (such as buying emission credits from countries which had a surplus, such as Russia).But at least the US was strongly behind the Kyoto Protocol and its principles. George Bush changed all that. After barely three months in office, he withdrew from the Kyoto agreement.”
The US was strongly behind Kyoto? Here, yet again, is the Senate’s 95-0 vote from August 1997.