The G8 meeting and climate change

It appears that the editors of Nature share my skepticism about President Bush's commitment to meaningful action on climate change:

The Bush administration, however, seems once again to be working to foil any meaningful progress by the G8 on climate issues. Merkel should learn lessons from what happened to UK prime minister Tony Blair when he sought to pursue the same agenda at the G8 at Gleneagles, Scotland, two years ago: by accommodating US resistance and talking compromise, he achieved precisely nothing.

This time, Merkel should hold her ground, refuse to include inadequate climate-change language in the final communiqué and, if necessary, dismiss G8 protocol and break publicly on the issue with Bush and any allies he can muster. (source)

The editors note that the successor to Kyoto must include involvement from India and China, in addition to the United States “but there is no going back on the concept of an international treaty, led by the developed countries but involving developing ones too, as a central component of a global strategy to curtail emissions.”.