Kyoto

Today the Kyoto Protocols went into effect, with the US not being on board at all. This is an obvious defeat for internationalists and environmentalists alike. Internationalists because the US soundly rejected an internationally backed plan, and environmentalists for the obvious reasons.

Simply put, this was a nice piece of triangulation by the Clinton administration that had a snowball's chance in hell of being passed. And that's why the Constitution works. The President can negotiate whatever crazy treaties he wants, but still needs the Senate to approve them before they can take effect. While some people, mostly Democrats, see the failure of the US in approving the Kyoto Treaty as a sign of Bush's unilateralism in foreign policy, most people just glance over or just plain forget that it was Clinton who chose not to submit the treaty to the Senate in the first place. The fact of the matter is that Clinton, Bush or the Senate were not about to commit political suicide because of the economic and social costs of implementing the treaty.

This of course doesn't mean that the environmental lobby is licked just yet. They'll probably just try to get the United States to jump onboard with the provisions of the Kyoto Treaty by the way that they usually do... through the bureaucracy.

Here's an article by Irwin Stelzer in the Weekly Standard that does a pretty good job of summing up the issues on both sides of the Atlantic:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=5263&r=swwai