Barack Obama was supposed to be the world’s environmentalist-in-chief, silent Mother Nature’s much-needed spokesman.
But was his promise to the polar bears as empty as his political résumé? Right now, the answer appears to be yes.
Flash back to February, when most Americans were stricken with an acute case of Obama-mania (a condition many of us still have). “President Obama,” wrote Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times, “has radically shifted the global equation, placing the United States at the forefront of the international climate effort and raising hopes that an effective international accord might be possible.” She continued, “Mr. Obama has said the United States will lead the effort.”
In the eight months since his inauguration, Obama has shown few signs of such leadership. In a surprising departure from its Obama-as-savior agenda, the New York Times ran a piece Sunday on the global lack of environmental leadership, implicitly calling Obama to arms. Writer Neil MacFarquhar wrote: “While virtually all of the largest developed and developing nations have made domestic commitments toward creating more efficient, renewable sources of energy to cut emissions, none want to take the lead in fighting for significant international emissions reduction targets, lest they be accused at home of selling out future jobs and economic growth.” MacFarquhar calls it the “after you” syndrome, and that is precisely what it is. It is also anti-progress and plain lazy. When has a country like the United States ever waited on a country like China to lead the world?
Incidentally, politicians’ fears that taking a lead on climate change will be domestically unpopular are largely unfounded. Now is as good a time as any to craft new climate change legislation. Governments worldwide are already in the process of rethinking their economic superstructures, largely in an effort to stave off future collapses. Why not incorporate into these economic overhauls and stimulus packages plans to rectify past mistakes, to succeed where the Bush administration could not: in proactively combating climate change and other environmental problems.
Europeans say the United States lacks the will to combat climate change — and they’re right. The amount of aid the U.S. has offered developing countries to help them adapt to climate change is peanuts in comparison to the $2 billion to $15 billion a year over the next decade that European governments have offered. Where is the environmental leader Obama promised to be?
Tuesday marks the start of the Summit on Climate Change, where some 100 world leaders will convene in New York City to negotiate a new climate change agreement, to be signed in Copenhagen this December at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. However, negotiations are apparently “badly stalled,” reports the New York Times, and small wonder: the working agreement is 200 pages long, and no doubt partly unsatisfactory to each country.
There are only a few goals that must be met for Copenhagen to be considered, at least in my mind, a success, including limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Fahrenheit, setting emissions targets for both developed and developing nations, and providing developing nations with aid money. The new agreement will replace the weak and ineffective 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which the United States never even ratified (and rightly, because China and India were not legally bound to its regulations). Let us hope Copenhagen succeeds where Kyoto failed.
Obama’s climate change envoy, Todd Stern, said in February that the United States would be involved in these upcoming negotiations “in a robust way.” There has been little evidence of such robustness to date, but there is still hope. Obama is expected to give a speech Tuesday at the Summit on Climate Change. It’s time for the president to step up and be the leader he promised to be.
Jason Kehe is a regular contributor to The D.C. Writeup.
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