The Kyoto Protocol came into force today. The aim is to avoid plunging the world into environmental disaster through man-made global warming.
Aside from a few cranks and paid shills, everyone in the scientific community believes this is a very real danger, and that Kyoto (followed by stricter measures) is a vital step. Unfortunately, the cranks and the paid shills have far more influence than they would in a better world.
One of the earliest of George W Bush’s many ‘God sent me to piss the world off’ moments was his decision to drop US support for Kyoto. This helped define the ‘ignorant cowboy’ image that his subsequent actions have done so much to confirm.
This is arguably unfair on the President. As Bush apologists frequently point out, he didn’t kill US support for Kyoto. Rather, the Senate voted 95-0 in 1998 to say it would not ratify any such treaty. Americans don’t like being told by experts that they probably ought to stop being greedy fucks or lots of people will die.
So why was Kyoto characterised as a Bush failing? Because the rest of the developed world spent four years trying hard not to be anti-American, despite the appallingness of more or less every aspect of American domestic and foreign policy. The only way to resolve this dilemma was by taking the position that Mr Bush was stupid, crooked and venal; that he certainly lost the popular vote and probably cheated in the election; and that therefore it was unreasonable to hate Americans for Mr Bush’s failings.
November 2004 made that position untenable. Rather than saying that we hate George Bush, smirking prick though he is, and blaming all America’s failings on him, we now need to say what we really mean.
We despise and fear a country willing to condemn millions to death for the sake of its SUVs, and willing to re-elect someone with such a record of incompetence, buffoonery and downright nastyness. We don’t hate all individual Americans; we don’t hate the efforts that the USA made during the first 150 years of its existence to advance human rights (and yes, to save our arses in WWII).
We do, however, hate what America has become.