Monbiot on Clinton/Gore

A good friend pointed me to George Monbiot's Friday appearance on Democracy Now! (well worth a listen, look, or read), in which he discusses global warming with his usual insight and intelligence.  His comments on the Clinton administration's record on global warming were particularly important for the vast number of Democrats who are still under the illusion that Clinton and Gore were on the right side of that issue.  An excerpt:

GEORGE MONBIOT: With Gore and Clinton, it was just a series of massive missed opportunities. They knew what they had to do, but they just didn't do it. And it has to be said that Gore's speech at the Kyoto Conference in 1997 was one of the most disgraceful pieces of international diplomacy I’ve ever come across. George Bush could have made that speech. It was just full of deliberate confusions and evasions and elisions about what needed to be done about climate change.

And I’m afraid to say that the Clinton-Gore administration in some ways did more harm than the Bush administration, because while Bush has gutted the US response to climate change, Gore and Clinton gutted the international response to climate change. They made sure that the Kyoto Protocol was pretty well a dead letter. They destroyed it as an effective instrument. And so, they destroyed it for everyone.

This closely mirrors what I've said about Gore specifically and the Clinton/Gore administration generally.  I've long felt that the effects of outright Bushian obstructionism on Kyoto (and global warming generally) are less detrimental to the ultimate goal of a worldwide response to the issue than the Clinton/Gore tactics of corporate-sponsored mitigation strategies, endless negotiations, watered-down targets, and disingenuous engagement.  And John "the Kyoto Protocol is not the answer" Kerry only promised more of the same.

The purpose in both cases has been the same--to ensure that the United States is not required to take any real steps to address global warming.  But with the Bush administration (and Republicans generally) people see that strategy for what it is, whereas with Democrats like Clinton and Gore they're lulled into a false sense of security by hollow words and empty actions.

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