At a White House press briefing yesterday, Dan Price, assistant to the President on international economic affairs, stressed the importance of the US "accountability" at the G8 meetings, promising, "The President has underscored the importance of ensuring the G8 members follow through on meeting commitments that had been made at previous summits.... G8 members need to follow through with actions to make good on those promises."

Last year, the G8 promised to "seriously consider" reducing their emissions 50 percent by 2050, but Price basically said don't hold your breath on making such ideas binding. We can't figure out the White House's angle here: are they trying to set the stage for an unproductive meeting or are they trying to engage the other 150 or so signatory nations to the Kyoto Protocol to step up? Or both?

Price spewed the typical Bush climate rhetoric: reduction policies mustn't hinder economic growth, the panacea of technology, all while plugging the Major Economies Meeting. The MEM will run concurrent to the G8 meeting, and is essentially the US' tool to undermine productive resolutions from the G8 discussions. Not that the US needs to put much effort into that, considering how incredibly unproductive previous UN negotiations have been.

We wish the briefing had allowed cameras because we'd really like to shake the hand of the reporter who asked: "Why is it that the G8 and the major economies as a group is not a large enough group to reach some kind of understanding on a commitment to greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2050? What's the point, if not -- what's the point of the meeting?"

While his answer ran several paragraphs, CEQ Chief Jim Connaughton promised discussions regarding the implementation of forestry management and carbon sequestration. We hope the president remembers a pen and paper, as the UK and Japan have been working hard on CCS. We suppose they see it as a technological solution that will promote their economic growth.