The United States said on Wednesday it opposed setting firm targets for greenhouse gas cuts at a G8 summit but offered reassurance that its plan for fighting climate change would not undermine U.N. efforts.
President George W. Bush told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he had a “strong desire” to work with her on greenhouse gas cuts beyond 2012 even though he has resisted her appeals for agreement at the June 6-8 summit in Germany.
Police and protesters clashed near the summit venue on the Baltic coast as G8 leaders gathered for a meeting likely to be dominated by issues including climate change, missile defences and Russia’s frosty relations with its partners.
Well Bush, that certainly won’t make those tree hugging liberals happy – like the NRA:
Nobody loves a loser. Repudiated at the polls last November, President George W. Bush is now being dissed by the National Rifle Association, his once faithful ally. More surprising still, the issue sundering the former friends is one new to the gun-rights organization: conservation.
“The Bush administration has placed more emphasis on oil and gas than access rights for hunters,” complained Ronald Schmeits, an NRA vice president, to the Washington Post. The NRA’s 4.2 million members increasingly find themselves locked out of prime wildlife areas, not by jackbooted federal bureaucrats but by the oil and gas industry. “Gun rights are still number one,” said Schmeits, “but there will be more time and effort spent on this issue as we move forward.”
The NRA has long considered it anathema to agree on much of anything with environmentalists, to whom it has imputed antigun and antihunting stands (falsely, in the case of the Sierra Club). For example, the NRA supported Bush’s efforts to overturn the Clinton-era “roadless rule,” even though it protected a huge swath of game-rich public land from logging, mining, and other development. It also backed extreme anti-environmental (but pro-gun-rights) politicians like former senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and former representative Richard Pombo (R-Calif.).
In recent years, however, polls have shown substantial majorities of hunters and fishers increasingly opposed to the Bush administration’s policies on public lands and wildlife. In addition, environmental groups like the Sierra Club have been reaching out to hunters and anglers, and that effort may be paying off. “When the NRA starts talking like the Sierra Club,” wrote Bob Marshall, outdoors editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “you know good times have arrived for fish, wildlife–and generations of sportsmen to come.”
A vast majority of this country wants something done about global warming. Even big corporate CEO’s are working to get more done and want the government to increase regulations. Just Bush and his extremist neo-con buddies want to ignore the problem. It just proves they care nothing about the planet, which also means they care nothing about life.