True North

We commented on the AP's Kyoto revisionism in "The AP strikes again" this past September, noting an AP story stating:

Under the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the United States joined a U.N. meeting in Kyoto and agreed to the protocol. But the United States rejected it under the administration of President George W. Bush, Clinton's successor.

Readers with a long memory may recall that the United States never adopted the Kyoto Protocol because the Clinton administration never submitted it for ratification to the Senate. The Clinton administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification because in July 1997 the Senate voted 95-0 to adopt a resolutionstating that ''the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto.''

Today Tom Friedman writes another consciousness-raising column on events at the UN global warming conference last week in Bali. According to Friedman, global warming presents an emergency requiring "transformational" economic action. Friedman's Bali buddies are dubious of America's bona fides as a result of "the gratuitous way President Bush trashed the Kyoto treaty in 2001, without presenting any alternative for six years. Message to world: 'Get lost. We only care about ourselves.'”

But Friedman, like the AP, conveniently forgets the role of the United States Senate as the original author of that resounding message regarding Kyoto. And a cynical person might conclude that Tom Friedman's carbon footprint sends an identical message, as does the hot air he contributes to the purported crisis of global warming.

Cross-posted at Powerline.