Senate, US public hold card
Business Times - 25 Dec 2009 PERSPECTIVE Senate, US public hold card That the US and China reached an agreement not to agree and to impose it on all others at the climate summit is probably the only good news that came out of Copenhagen By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT CRITICS of former US president George W Bush's unilateralist approach to foreign policy had assumed that President Barack Obama's commitment to pursuing a more multilateralist global agenda would finally help produce international agreements on a variety of issues, including climate change. Hence, if the unilateralist Mr Bush opposed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and refused to submit the treaty for Senate ratification, then the multilateralist Mr Obama would play a leading role in getting a new climate-change accord approved in Copenhagen this year and would be able to mobilise American public and Congressional support for a new UN framework aimed at combating global warming. Or those at least were the expectati...