To follow up on my post below: we have been warned to hide our belts and shoelaces because a “pretty bad” White House announcement reversing seven generally strong years of “climate-change” policy is going to be announced in the Rose Garden at 2:45 PM tomorrow. The President will call for a global deal binding China, India, et al. which — if you believe in such things — is surely much further over the horizon than the next eight months, judging by the past decade of Kyoto-agreement evidence. But critically he will also push, we are told, for “mandatory” restrictions on the domestic front (conservatives extracted a promise today of no mention of cap-and-trade or carbon taxes) that he hopes to sign before he leaves office.

Stop and picture the global negotiating table where – but for one brief hiatus when the Clinton-Gore team walked away in November 2000 at The Hague — we have been sitting for almost 15 years. We’re there, along with 190 other countries, even though about 15 matter for purposes of addressing emissions. The rest are there simply for a turn at the feeding trough to wet their beaks — to mix the rent-seeking metaphors. So, Kyoto has become a global industry and we are shelling out money to the rest of the world to . . . well, it’s not quite clear what it is we’re paying them to do under these auspices. But they demand that it be this way.

So we’re there at the table, as are China, India, Mexico, and the rest of the insistent free-riders. We know they want something from us in addition to all of the “climate aid.” That “something” is to do to ourselves domestically what Europe has done. It is in return for this that we are asking something from them, and holding out giving them that thing they want. This is how negotiations work.

In the past month, they have reaffirmed that their answer is no. The UN backed them up, in a reversal from its longstanding position that of course less-developed countries would be required to participate in the second Kyoto round. So, in anticipation of upcoming talks we announce an intention to . . . take the one item of leverage we had off the table.