I mean, yes, they feel that way, but you’re just not supposed to say it.

While I love the ClimateWire headline — “U.S. vows continuing effort toward a 17% emission cut” (subscription required), sort of like I vow to continue my effort toward hitting fewer pedestrians when I drive…not to hit fewer pedestrians when I drive…ah, J-school — the following excerpt from the piece is simply beyond belief.

Speaking to a U.N ‘Kyoto II’ negotiating group in Bangkok, U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing “noted in a series of slides that U.S. emissions have declined about 8.7 percent since 2005 — and while he acknowledged that a portion of that is due to the economic downturn, Pershing insisted that the more important metric is whether America is meeting its target.”

Re-read that.

I suppose now is a bad time to remind people that Bill Clinton said, fairly recently of the same agenda, “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

Team Obama may be a little unclear on how to define success for, say, their Libya agenda. But on this one I’d say they’ve made themselves clear enough.