October 29, 2001
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Quote of the day - and some stealth good news for "Fast Track"
This comes via a CSM article about the new global warming negotiations:
Yet the difficulty of trying to reach an agreement should come as no surprise, says Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, a Washington-based environmental group. "You're trying to change the energy economy of the planet," he says. "No one has ever undertaken a treaty that complicated."Yes, and the history of highly complex economic planning is so encouraging.
Apparently, at least one Senator, quoted later, feels that we don't have to ratify a treaty to have it take effect. Remember that the Senate is charged with ratification:
Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts notes that the US has signed treaties in the past, then failed to ratify them. Yet, he says, the treaties still affected US policy. Thus, even if the US fails to ratify the Kyoto Protocols, "this is not a Pyrrhic exercise."Bills introduced in the House and Senate target power plants that burn fossil fuels, and aim to reduce emissions of four pollutants, two of which - carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide - are greenhouse gases.
Gee. Somehow ratification makes the process a bit more...democratic, don't you think? And these latter bills, good or bad, could they be a spontaneous "unilateral" initiative? Perish the thought.
Oh, and as Columbo would say, "just one more thing"...If President Bush signed a Western Hemisphere free trade treaty, does that mean Kerry doesn't have to ratify it?
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at October 29, 2001 11:01 AM | Technorati inbound links