Pride in
failure

With a track record of brash contempt for the environment and any damage his oil industry pals might be doing to it, George W. Bush, the soon-to-be black smear on American history, ended his final G8 meeting by grinning, pumping his fist in the air and saying, “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

Considering carbon emissions were among the bigger issues on the well-set table in Japan, Bush’s guffaw wasn’t simply taken as another “Oh, that Georgie” eye-roller, but as an overt, closing flip-off to a topic the American president never showed much interest in.

“Everyone was very surprised that he was making a joke about America’s record on pollution,” said one official in attendance. Particularly since Bush had told the gathered world leaders that he’d “seriously consider” target cuts of 50 per cent in carbon emissions by 2050.

The White House had already been embarrassed earlier in the summit when it was noticed that their press kit described Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi as one of the “most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice.” That gaffe was explained away as “sloppy work” by an official who’d lifted the description off the Internet without reading it.

by SCOTT SAXON