That's a relief. More than a week after TCS ran the story, the British press gets round to reporting Tony Blair's straight talk. The Telegraph sums up:
Mr Blair, who has been seen up to now as a strong supporter of the Kyoto Treaty, effectively tore the document up and admitted that rows over its implementation will "never be resolved."
Mr Blair told the New York conference: "I would say probably I'm changing my thinking about this in the past two or three years. I think if we are going to get action we have got to start from the brutal honesty about the politics of how we deal with it.
The Sunday Times weighs in too:
...Blair suggested he no longer had faith in global agreements as a way of reversing rising greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he appeared to place his faith in science, technology and the free market — a position that President George W Bush adopted when he repudiated the Kyoto treaty in 2001.
More in the Observer and Independent.
Plus - shock, horror - a glimmer of good news on the BBC's relentlessly one-sided coverage of the Kyoto debate. Over at EnviroSpin Watch, Philip Stott has nothing but praise for Richard Black's even-handed overview about the link, or lack thereof, between hurricanes and global warming. " First-class journalistic analysis", declares Stott.
UPDATE: Normal service is resumed. Environmentalist Jonathan Porritt [audio link] is given an easy ride as he launches an attack on Blair and American "lies" on the Today programme. Porritt is a good guy in lots of ways. But where's the balance?
UPDATE 2: Philip Stott scans the press, and is bemused: "It is time for the British media to grow up over the politics of climate change."
UPDATE 3: Indy columnist and Green advocate Johann Hari appears stunned to discover TB cosying up to "the human oil-barrel" [excuse me?] Condoleezza Rice.
They're pleased over at the Adam Smith Institute blog, yet mildly puzzled all the same:
Most intriguing of all is the question of where Tony Blair is getting his advice from? Surely not from his usual retinue? Not Bono, not Sir Bob Geldof, and certainly not his chief scientific adviser Sir David King? Surely it cannot have been from Margaret Beckett, off to Ottawa to conceive a son of Kyoto? ...He cannot be reading scientific papers. The transcript of his NY speech seems casual and off the cuff. Who briefed him? Who is not politically correct on climate among his friends?
Why did Tony Blair admit this publicly and bring down all this abuse on his head? Why not continue to be like the French and Germans, who heap praises on Kyoto while doing absolutely nothing to implement it? They get a free pass from the left because they express all the correct sentiments. I don't know why Bush didn't do the same thing, or why Blair didn't continue to do it.
Posted by: M. Brown | Monday, September 26, 2005 at 06:38 PM