Don't the Democrats Want to Stop Global Warming?

Jonah Goldberg reports:

Forget the war for a minute. What's the second most important issue for liberals today? Global warming, of course. For example, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) claims that he's not running for president in '08 so he can dedicate himself to the issues of Iraq and climate change. John Edwards says global warming will make world war look like heaven. Major donors in Hollywood who hate the prospect of sweating in greenhouse gases as they walk to the gangway of their private jets think that global warming is the defining issue of our age.

So now's the time to solve global warming, right? For years, we've been subjected to charges that President Bush "refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol." Well, guess what? Bush couldn't sign Kyoto. It was already signed by the previous president — that Clinton guy — who immediately shoved it in his desk drawer. (Bush didn't sign the Treaty of Versailles either, by the way.)

If Kyoto's such a priority, why hasn't Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) fought to take it up? There's a strong legal case that, once signed, a treaty is automatically in the Senate's court. Senators can take it up anytime they want. But you don't hear Reid fighting to take up Kyoto even though it's our best hope to combat the Most Dangerous Threat Facing Mankind.

Of course, Kyoto would never pass even a Democrat-controlled Senate because it would wreak havoc on the economy.