It's not what you do, it's what you say

Even in my pre-Republican conversion days, I applauded Bush's decision to get out of the Kyoto Treaty. No matter how much the reporters at NPR dressed that Treaty up, and castigated Bush for reneging on it, it was clear that it was a poor deal for the U.S. Here's Mark Steyn on the same subject:

I notice, for example, that signatories to the Kyoto treaty are meeting in Montreal this week - maybe in the unused Olympic stadium - to discuss 'progress' on 'meeting' their 'goals'. Canada remains fully committed to its obligation to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by six per cent of its 1990 figure by 2008. That's great to know, isn't it? So how's it going so far? Well, by the end of 2003, Canada's greenhouse-gas emissions were up 24.2 per cent. Meanwhile, how are things looking in the United States? As you'll recall, in a typically 'pig-headed and blinkered' (Independent) act that could lead to the entire planet becoming 'uninhabitable' (Michael Meacher), 'Polluter Bush' (Daily Express), 'this ignorant, short-sighted and blinkered politician' (Friends of the Earth), rejected the Kyoto treaty. Yet somehow the 'Toxic Texan' (everybody) has managed to outperform Canada on almost every measure of eco-virtue. How did that happen? Actually, it's not difficult. Signing Kyoto is nothing to do with reducing 'global warming' so much as advertising one's transnational moral virtue. America could reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 87 per cent and Canada could increase them by 673 per cent and the latter would still be a 'good citizen of the world' (in the Prime Minister's phrase) while 'Polluter Bush' would still be in the dog house, albeit a solar-powered one.