As a leader on Climate Change and the Environment, Senator Kerry participated last Thursday, September 20th on a teleconference briefing in advance of the United Nations meeting "The Future in our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change," which took place yesterday, Monday September 24th.

In this conference call Senator Kerry is very hopeful in movement on this critical issue. As he states:

"So we're very hopeful, but there's no way to make a prediction. I don't want to downgrade because we are hopeful, and we want to be positive about what might come, but I'm not going to hype a huge transition in an administration that's obviously been very reluctant to deal with this for seven years."

Listen to Senator Kerry's remarks and the Q&A that followed.

Fortunately Senator Kerry did not make a prediction about this administration in the conference call. Bush has lived down to his usual standard of behavior and has now indicated that he will not meet with other world leaders on this critical issue but merely dine with them.

Senator Kerry released a statement on Bush's refusal to attend the meetings going on in New York this week:

“The Bush Administration has done everything in its power to downplay, discount, and distract from the threat of climate change, so it’s not surprising that the President is skipping a series of high-level meetings designed to address the problem,” Kerry said.

“As heads of state of 80 different countries and representatives from 150 countries gather in New York to chart the global response to climate change, the President’s absence sends a clear signal that he isn’t really serious about an international emissions reduction plan.

“The President needs to exhibit leadership and spend some political capital by committing to serious domestic emission reductions and rejoining the world’s leaders in a new global strategy to tackle this urgent issue.”

And now we find out Bush is having his own Climate meeting in Washington, D.C. later this week so that he can set the agenda. James Connaughton, the president's chief environmental adviser, stated, "It's our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be.

Bush's approach sets the stage for a new round of diplomatic confrontation. It raises the prospect that he could once again put the United States in the position of objecting to any binding international agreement intended to slow or reverse the damages of climate change.

We're counting on you, Senator Kerry, to keep on carrying the banner for serious action on the issues that climate change and our environment demand.