Corridors of Power: Climate Change, the G-8 and Changing Views of Catholicism

Editor's Note: Corridors of Power, written by World Politics Review Editor-at-Large Roland Flamini, appears every Monday.

A PARTING GIFT FOR BLAIR? -- At a Friday Council on Foreign Relations briefing in Washington on this week's G-8 summit, Gene Sperling, former National Economic Council director, and now a CFR senior fellow, said President Bush's proposal for a series of meetings on climate change are "an attempted parting gift to Prime Minister [Tony] Blair . . . and I think if Blair is trying to look and say he got something out of this partnership, perhaps this is his last chance to say that he . . . somehow moved President Bush."

Bush's proposal has been widely dismissed as a rhetorical flourish, particularly since the president gave no concrete targets or commitments to cap greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and it is hard to see how Blair, who is passionate about the climate change crisis, will see it as anything else.