Proud moment: The U.S. is no longer the world’s biggest jerk on climate change

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/climate-energy/proud-moment-the-u-s-is-no-longer-the-worlds-biggest-jerk-on-climate-change/

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What stood out most about the United States’ role in the United Nations climate talks that just wrapped in Warsaw, Poland, was how little the United States stood out.

While the U.S. is used to being the bad guy — or at least one of them — in the international climate arena, this year the Americans seemed perfectly happy to keep their heads down, quietly do their business, and let other big polluters take the punches.

It doesn’t usually work this way. For the nearly two decades that the U.N.’s annual climate talks have been held — and especially for the past 12 years, since the U.S. backed out of the Kyoto Protocol that it had helped design — the world’s largest historical greenhouse gas polluter has taken most of the blame from environmental groups and poor countries for essentially causing the problem and doing squat to solve it.

This year, though, American negotiators are heading home relatively unscathed, if severely sleep deprived from the marathon, 36-hour session that was needed to wrap up the talks with something resembling an agreement. (You can read all about the outcomes in John Upton’s somewhat-less-than-disheartening wrap-up.)

[unhappycamper]

1. We're not Number 1?

n/t

[madrchsod]

2. i`m betting china or india is number 1 on the hit parade

the usa has come a long way in curbing industrial pollution