Report: Bush Tells G8 Leaders "Goodbye From The World's Biggest Polluter"

Perhaps President Bush has been paying attention to all the bad press his climate policies have received. Before leaving the G8 this week, The Independent reports Bush "told his fellow leaders: 'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter.'"

President Bush made the private joke in the summit's closing session, senior sources said yesterday. His remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the President from Texas who is wedded to the oil industry. He had given some ground at the summit by saying he would "seriously consider" a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050.

But green groups had protested that the meeting was a missed opportunity to secure the radical reductions in carbon emissions that were needed to reduce global warming. China and India, who were among the emerging economies invited to the summit, refused to sign up to binding agreements without firmer commitments from the US and the other industrialised nations to cut their CO2 emissions.