US "ready to lead" on climate change

From the New York Times online:

WASHINGTON — After eight years largely on the sidelines of the international policy debate on climate change, the United States is prepared to lead negotiations toward a new global warming treaty, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.

“The United States is fully engaged and determined to lead and make up for lost time both at home and abroad,” Mrs. Clinton told delegates from 16 countries at a State Department conference on energy and climate. “We are back in the game.”

The meeting in Washington was the first of three planned sessions among the participating countries, who together account for roughly 75 percent of emissions of the gases blamed for the heating of the planet. Officials said the conference, the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, was intended to supplement, not replace, broader talks that begin in Copenhagen in December to write a new international treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

It's about time.