June 11, 2007
Where next after the G8 climate deal?
No news yet from the informal meeting of environment ministers in Sweden that began today, following the G8 agreement on tackling climate change, covered on this blog by Fiona Harvey here and here. But Hu Jintao, China’s president, has been in the country signing a deal for, among other things, sharing environmental knowhow.
Meanwhile, the bloggers have been reacting to the Heiligendamm agreement. 3E Intelligance describes it as a "climate compromise… which will not be mentioned in the history books," and Blueclimate.org is similarly sceptical. The funniest take is from Jon Stewart, at Gristmill (you may need to scroll down.)
But the most disappointed response came from the newspaper pundit Melanie Phillips on BBC TV, who lamented what she saw as president Bush’s capitulation to the "ideological Big Lie" of man-made global warming (she writes about it on her blog here.) Ms Phillips, a graduate in English literature, reports "a steady stream of public support since the programme from people who have also rumbled the scam." Her fellow dissenters, she writes, "are silently refusing to sign up to this demonstrable absurdity, and… are resisting it in the way that all peoples resist lies which are imposed on pain of social ostracism, professional exile or worse – in their minds, which no-one can touch, and where the flame of truth and freedom never dies."
She cites Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic as an inspiration; his views as a climate change sceptic are well-known. But his reaction to the G8 deal, as reported by the Prague Daily Monitor, is a less than whole-hearted attack.
