It was sort of like how Larry Bird used to tell the other team how he was going to score, then, as promised, knocked down the predicted jump shot. Before these international policy talks between the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluters, the Bush administration laid their G8 climate playbook out for all to see, then came away from the summit with a victory. It was awesome when Bird would do it; but when the U.S. “wins” a climatic match, all the world (not least the icecaps and atmosphere) suffers the agony of defeat.

A little background: last week the Bush administration announced a vague, voluntary set of carbon reduction goals that were so porous and reductive that it prompted NRDC’s own Climate Policy Director, David Doniger, to offer another sporty metaphor: “The president is warming up to throw his opening pitch while business, states and the rest of the world are already at the top of the ninth inning.” The most overtly embarrassing bit is that three of the world’s largest oil companies—BP, ConocoPhillips, and Shell—have already called for measures stricter than Bush’s “plan.”

The “other seven” of this Group of 8 knew what was coming, and Chancellor Angela Merkel had the home field advantage (with the talks in Germany) to defend her goal of a mandatory halving of greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s richest industrial nations by 2050. Alas, Bush wasn’t playing the game as a friendly, keeping firm his stance of voluntary reductions (in)action and forcing the Great 8 to an entirely flaccid “agreement.” From the final report: “In setting a global goal for emissions reduction in the process we have agreed today involving all major emitters, we will consider seriously the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050.” So these G8 nations have effectively agreed that, sometime in the ambiguous future, they’ll figure a way to agree on emissions reductions.