Obama risks losing face at the Copenhagen Conference
Nov 25th, 2009 | 9 responses
A two-edged sword lurks under President Barack Obama’s sudden decision to attend the Copenhagen talks on climate change. Just a few hours ago the United Nations Climate Change Conference seemed headed to muddle and failure. Obama’s presence on December 9 gives a welcome boost but it could also bring ignominy upon the President if he cannot knock heads together.
The Copenhagen meet is the main stepping stone to renewal of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in 2012. This is a hot button issue in the running battles between believers and skeptics of climate change impacts and how the economic burden of remedies should be shared between the US, Europe and emerging nations like China, Brazil and India.
The Kyoto Protocol, which has been signed and ratified by 187 countries, commits 37 industrialized countries and the European community to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012. It is an addition to the earlier UN Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded at the 1992 Earth Summit.
Many countries have severely criticized the US for years because it stands outside the Protocol although it causes over 36% of 1990 emission levels. Obama’s decision now offers the audacity to hope. But the mountains are not easy to climb in just a few days after more than a decade of foot dragging.
Experts say Copenhagen will fail unless some essentials are agreed. The most important is by how much the US and Europe will reduce greenhouse emissions. What they do depends in large part on whether China and India will limit emissions.
How the developing countries act will be determined partly by the financial and technical help they get from the West. Even if the several hundred billion dollars necessary were to be appear, knotty questions remain about who will manage the money.
Obama’s decision to attend Copenhagen may indicate a backroom deal with India during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit but complex international conferences have a way of slipping out of control. Historically, the West caused about 80% of the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Since 1950, the U.S. has emitted about 51 billion tons of carbon, compared to about 16 and 4 billion tons by China and India respectively. Of course, those numbers will increase as the years advance.
Rich countries house 20% of the world’s population but cause over 60 percent of carbon emissions. Poor countries say they should not be asked to make sacrifices before people in the West work seriously to end their profligacy. For example, each American causes carbon emissions over 20 times higher than a person in India, 12 times higher than Brazil and seven times higher than China.
Obama’s decision to attend Copenhagen may be a political gambit born of his team’s desire to build him up the person trying to save the world from climate disaster. If so, he might end with pie on his face because negotiating positions are so far apart that even the organizers, who are paid to sound optimistic, are voicing trepidation.
The US team includes five Secretaries and several other top officials but what they bring to the table is a 17% reduction target below 2005 levels in 2020 expanding to 42% in 2030 and 83% in 2050. These targets are already contained in legislation before Congress making it look as if the White House is trying to use Copenhagen as part of its domestic agenda to put pressure for quicker passage.
If Obama fails to enchant Copenhagen, Congress may see that as an international community refusal to play ball. Accusations that he talks better than he delivers will become louder and passage of the domestic energy and climate bills may become harder.
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9 Responses to “Obama risks losing face at the Copenhagen Conference”
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Wiser Americans don't want Obama to embarrass himself too much by being too extreme at this silly gathering, or worse, to commit the USA to unrealistic binding goals, as a pretext for committing more wrongdoing here at home.
Viewing Obama's effort as directed toward warped objectrives of the far Left, and dispassionately how he might try to “save face” (at the US's and Americans' expense) with the far Left in the developed world (not only the USA), for himself and “for” the USA, he's actually doing more and better than might be the case currently, given what else he is struggling with. Supposedly he's actually planning to be more bold than expected, and even try to commit the USA to something that will make some far Lefties feel good. (The worst extremists won't be satisfied, as they will likely never be satisfied.)
If President Obaqma was worried about saving face, he'd stop embracing false science to futher political goals.
I consider myself an environmentalist. I know that man can impact his environment through irresponsible industrial and commercial enterprises. We do this on a “micro” scale everywhere man exists on earth. However, to assert that the human race causes the rise and fall in temperatures on earth is not only false, but it is extremely arrogant.
So I have one message to President Obama and the DNC. Do not pee on me and tell me it's raining. If you want to pursue cap and trade and green energy to accomplish your political agenda, then come out and say so. Do not insult my intelligence by claiming it if for the betterment of mankind to prevent global warming, global cooling, climate change, or whatever you are calling it this month.
The earth experiences a natural cycle of warming and cooling as evidenced by geological core samples. The sun also experiences cycles of high and low activity (flares, sunspots). I'm all for green energy as a means to produce dependable and renewable energy. I'm also behind it for national security reasons – as we wouldn't have to bow down to foreign powers to run our economy.
It's a great idea. But please, Mr. President, be honest about this issue. Only then will you save face.
What is a non-scientist to think? Conflicting reports, often supported by one party or the other tell us we are really polluting the skies and causing global warming The other side says, nah. All I can come up with, at this point, is we (the world) should try to cut back on emissions, cause as my doctor once told me about smoking “it can't help you”. BTW: I have no doubt about water pollution and shortages, that's real for sure.
JD embracing false science that has been around since the creation of NASA and the NOAA sounds a little strange to me. I might also add that many climate change denialers aren't even pointing to those arguments you posted as proponents for becoming green they seem to be against all forms of going green no matter how benificial it is to the US economy and national security.
“If President Obaqma was worried about saving face, he'd stop embracing false science to futher political goals.”
The politics have always been stronger and bigger than the related, highly-corrupted, science.
The same leftist economic and political (“social”) objectives have been there since the later 1960s and the US-and-West-misdirected “population explosion” hysteria, followed by “the food crisis” and failing harvests and desertification, followed by global cooling, followed by global warming. (The Evil Reagan Administration was also seen as a nuclear-war and militarist threat to the planet, with again the same goals being sought.) The “global warming” (currently hedged by the substitution of the phrase “climate change,” used in a deliberately speculative, albeit anticipatory, as well as vernacular manner) political sub-movement of environmentalism and government interventionism and leftist agenda achievement is simply the latest, biggest in years, excuse (it is somewhat insulting etymologically to say “rationale”).
“they seem to be against all forms of going green no matter how benificial it is”
Incorrect. Critics who know we're quite capable of modifying our environment are sensible as well as honest and rational; typical proponents are completely unrealistic and are in favor of rushing (stupidly) to embrace all kinds of changes to our economy and society no matter how harmful and perverse as well as ineffective or destructive they are or threaten to be.
“we (the world) should try to cut back on emissions,”
Real emissions, real pollution, that is — by all means, subject to cost-benefit analysis, and predicated on the continuation of progress, not perversely halting progress or worse, deliberately retrogressing. That is not what the activists want.
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“Do not insult my intelligence by claiming it if for the betterment of mankind to prevent global warming, global cooling, climate change, or whatever you are calling it this month.”
Unfortunately, the leaked e-mails won't constitute a lesson; rather, this is likely, sadly, to a (bad) motive.
http://copenhagendiagnosis.org/
Part of the fun in helping a cause and taking a stand is the fact that you don't have a guarantee you'll win or that you'll get good returns for helping. Sometimes, the means is actually more significant than the ends.
http://ecoseed.org/en/general-green-news/copenh…