Bush Not About To Grant Any Favors to Blair On Climate Issues

We're all aware of President's Bush rather "peculiar" position on the issue of climate change and environment protection. And it seems that in this case, not even his international allies are able to do anything about it.

According to Reuters, George W. Bush has told Prime Minister Tony Blair to expect no favors at this week's Group of Eight summit in return for backing war in Iraq as a deal on climate change looked set to offer little concrete action.

"I really don't view our relationship as one of quid pro quo," Bush told ITV1 television in an interview. "Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did.

"So I go to the G8 not really trying to make him look bad or good, but ... with an agenda that I think is best for our country."

Blair has made tackling global warming and relieving African poverty the twin goals of his year-long presidency of the G8. He will host his fellow leaders at the Gleneagles hotel in Scotland from Wednesday to Friday.

But in the interview, Bush was cautious, and environmental experts said rather than risk an open rift, the eight leading nations had decided on an accord offering the barest minimum on planetary warming.

"If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is 'no'. The Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy," Bush said in the interview, which was recorded last Wednesday and will be broadcast later on Monday.

"I think you can grow your economy and at the same time do a better job of harnessing greenhouse gases. That's exactly what I intend to talk to our partners about," he said.

Bush did concede that climate change was "a significant, long-term issue that we've got to deal with" and to "some extent" man-made, evidence perhaps of some shift in ground.

But environmentalists said it appeared the summit would provide little or nothing on actually cutting greenhouse gases.

"This is an utterly insufficient statement from the United States which doesn't even accept the scale of the problem we face, let alone its emergency," said Tony Juniper of pressure group Friends of the Earth.