BILL HEMMER (HOST): You've got big issues though, Byron. I mean, is [climate change] manmade or not? Can we reverse it, if true, or not? What will countries demand? What will countries concede? It's not easy stuff, and there is a reason why they haven't been able to nail this down for 25 years working on it.
BYRON YORK (CONTRIBUTOR): Yeah and the biggest reason why right now are countries like China and India, as Kevin just mentioned, they are the biggest emitters along with the United States on the planet and they have been very very vague about how much they will cut their emissions and when. And that's not going to change in this deal. So President Obama certainly hoped he could come home from Paris with some big big climate deal but that's not going to happen, and the president as you know has instead penned a lot of his hopes for this on his own domestic unilateral executive actions which he announced in August. But those are the topic of a big fight in the courts and in Congress too.
HEMMER: So we went to the websites in Anchorage Alaska and Fairbanks this morning. Neither story had a story about Paris and climate change. Fairbanks newspaper online said this on November 27: “If Fairbanks residents feel like they've seen more snow than usual so far this winter, they're right. The city has had the third-most snowfall on record for this time of year. According to the National Weather Service, which measures snowfall at its hillside location at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, 50 inches of snow had officially fallen on the Golden Heart city through Thanksgiving day. Since records began that ranks below only 1970 and 1992 for any winter as of November 26.” The reason I point that out, in his opening remarks today, the president talked about his trip to Alaska just a few months ago. We are in a campaign season, Byron. Where do voters rank [these] issues? Do they care about them? What do you find?
YORK: Well, first of all the White House would dismiss all that as just anecdotal evidence. But you are absolutely right about the voters.
