After Bali

What happened

Participants in the Bali conference on climate change said the hard work lays ahead, and Democratic presidential hopefuls rushed to present themselves as the most committed to fighting global warming. (Toronto Star) A U.N. report called Sen. John McCain the leading GOP candidate on the issue of climate change. (The Washington Post, free registration)

What the commentators said

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It’s hard to know what Bali was about, said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times (free registration). The confusing document that came out of the meeting last week calls for a new accord on fighting global warming by 2009, but “my gut tells me that both the North and South Poles will melt before we get it to work.” This was “incremental” movement, and truly gaining ground on the problem will take “transformational” change that only U.S. leadership can bring.

This is just more “hot air” from Tom Friedman on the “purported crisis of global warming,” said Scott Johnson in Power Line. Friedman “conveniently forgets the role of the United States Senate as the original author of that resounding message regarding” the Kyoto Protocol. He tries to pin Kyoto’s failure on President Bush, but conveniently forgets that it was Bill Clinton’s administration that “never submitted” that agreement to the Senate for ratification.

Surely no one would argue that the Bush administration takes global warming seriously, said Katharine Mieszkowski in Salon. The ink was barely dry on the Bali agreement when the White House “released a statement expressing ‘serious concerns’ that the Bali road map doesn't demand enough of the developing world.”