Although the meeting of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change has barely started in Bali amid horrendous floods and mudflows in other parts of Indonesia, its message is already abundantly clear (“Struggling to Decode Bali’s Message,” December 1, 2007). The meeting will fall far short of Kyoto, which fell far short of what was needed so many years ago. And the reason is abundantly clear, as well. In fact, it is one and the same. The chief contributor to climate change, and possibly the chief contributor to its eventual control, is not there to lead the pack. Without America’s leadership of the fifteen- to twenty-thousand participants who have gathered for the meeting, Bali will surely get exactly where Kyoto got. Nowhere.