BUSH STICKS TO HIS GUNS ON GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming.

The subject arose yet again in the Group of Eight summit talks among the leading industrial nations, recently concluded in Genoa, Italy.

The 1997 Kyoto protocol, which was rejected (95-0) in a U.S. Senate vote so decisive that the Clinton administration never even submitted it for ratification, seeks to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Amazingly, that unanimous vote included many of the Democratic senators now criticizing President Bush for taking his principled stand.

The Kyoto protocol would need to be ratified by 55 nations responsible for 55 percent of emissions worldwide to come into force. Four years after the bureaucrats rolled it out, exactly one nation has ratified it: Romania.

To his everlasting credit, Bush has flatly rejected Kyoto and stuck to his guns amid much pressure, both on the domestic and international levels.

"The methodology in the Kyoto accord is something that would harm our nation's economy," said Bush while standing next to German leader Gerhard Schroeder, who is said to favor the accord. Japan also refuses to ratify the accord as long as the United States isn't on board. Said European Union President Romano Prodt: "No progress has been made on the approval of the Kyoto protocol."

The Kyoto protocol is rapidly approaching the status of a colossal joke, as the bureaucrats responsible for it scurry about at their expensive international conclaves, desperately trying to breathe life into the corpse.

One guesses that proponents of Kyoto expect that the rest of us won't recall that it was many of the same suspects, now hysterical about global warming, who after a couple of cold winters during the 1970s were warning us about the coming of a new Ice Age.

If it isn't one thing, it's another.