More on the APPCDC

That would be the recently announced Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, the non-Kyoto like agreement between the Kyoto Outsiders US and Australia and Kyoto Insiders China, India, Japan, and South Korea to share technology in an effort to curb greenhouse gases. But it doesn't have any particulars about what this pact really means. And it makes no commitments to reaching any threshold of lowered emissions. Whatever--it shows that the Outsiders really do care about the failing environment/atmosphere. Really, they do. GristMill's Muckraker column takes a look at this rather substance-less pact and provides a few possible details.

When reporters at a press conference pushed Connaughton to explain the substance of the pact -- What technologies will be emphasized? What will the partnerships look like? Who will be carrying them out? What, exactly, is new about this alliance? -- he dodged questions with McClellan-esque aplomb. "[W]hat we're trying to do is create a framework in which we can define more effectively and on a faster timescale real programs of action that will deliver real investments and real places," he said. [...] On the subject of technology, Connaughton put heavy emphasis on the administration's interest in expanding both clean coal and nuclear technologies, making about half a dozen references to each. He made only a passing mention of "bio-energy" and one of "renewables," but never defined what he meant by those catchphrases nor indicated that they were priorities. This may have something to do with the fact that, as Greenpeace USA research director Kert Davies observed, "The only thing that the U.S. has to sell the developing world is nuclear reactors and this unsubstantiated promise of clean coal. When it comes to developing fuel-efficient cars, solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal, and other renewables technologies, we are badly losing the race to Japan and Europe. We have a comparatively small stake in selling those technologies abroad." Australian Prime Minister Howard also talked up coal during his remarks on the agreement: "Australia is the largest coal exporter in the world and it is in Australia's interests that we try and find a way of coal being consumed in a manner that does not add as much as it does now to greenhouse-gas emissions." He described the treaty's emphasis as "finding ways of reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions flowing from the exploitation of traditional energy sources." This kind of commentary led Bob Brown, head of Australia's Green Party, to label the agreement a "coal pact," noting that Australia isn't the only big coal producer at the table. China, the U.S., and India are also top producers of this hot commodity, and aren't anxious to phase it out anytime soon. [...] To get a Bush administration response to these charges, Muckraker put in a call to the State Department's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES), which handles all climate matters in the department. It was the department's Deputy Secretary Robert Zoellick who formally announced the agreement last week at a press conference with his counterparts from participating countries, and yet OES staffers were unwilling to comment on how much involvement their bureau had in the creation of the pact, or even to discuss the pact on the record. Said one taciturn staffer, "[T]his is an initiative that has been led by the White House." This seems further indication that the agreement represents politics without pith. According to Sandalow, former director of the OES, "It's very hard to imagine that a six-nation agreement of any real substance could be created without the State Department's involvement at multiple levels."

The APPCDC has been roundly criticized by all environmental groups and left-leaning editorial pages. But here's the best denouncement I've seen--from John McCain:

The [Asia-Pacific] pact amounts to nothing more than a nice little public-relations ploy," he told Muckraker. "It has almost no meaning. They aren't even committing money to the effort, much less enacting rules to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.