Obama's climate accord fails the test

[IndianaGreen]

NBC's Andrea Mitchell just broke the news on the Rachel Maddow show that China sent a low level official as its representative to Copenhagen.

Obama's climate accord fails the test

Watered-down agreement follows day of bitter wrangling in Copenhagen

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, in Copenhagen

Saturday, 19 December 2009

World leaders late last night agreed a hugely watered-down version of a new global pact on climate change, after an astonishing day of deadlock, disagreement, misunderstandings, walkouts and insults at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

The agreement, patched together after massive and rancorous divisions between the rich nations and the developing countries, especially America and China, was described as a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" by the US President Barack Obama. However, a senior American official openly admitted it was not enough to combat the threat of a warming planet, saying merely: "It is a first step."

Known as the Copenhagen Accord, the new agreement falls massively short of the ambitions many people had centred on the two-week meeting in the Danish capital, in the hope of a major new effort to combat the global warming threat. Although in principle it commits – for the first time – all the countries of the world, including the developing countries, to cut their emissions of the greenhouse gases which are causing climate change, the accord is not legally binding, merely a political statement.

They key timetable for turning it into a legal instrument by this time next year, which is what the world desperately needs so that cuts in CO2 emissions really are carried out, was dropped from the text during the immensely difficult and seemingly-intractable talks which lasted all day and late into the evening. In effect, that makes it toothless. Mr Obama himself admitted that a binding deal would be "hard to achieve".

And although, again for the first time, the new accord set a target for the whole world to try to keep the expected rise in temperatures to below the danger threshold of C above the pre-industrial level, last night's final text dropped all reference to the individual targets for emission cuts which countries will have to take on, both in the medium and in the long-term. It is possible these may be inserted early next year – but without being legally binding, they are merely generalised aspirations.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/obamas-climate-accord-fails-the-test-1845090.html

[mike_c]

1. walking away with ANYTHING except their hat in hand...

...seems meaningful and unprecedented to this administration. Maybe we should have sent Larry Summers and his our bottomless check book.

[IndianaGreen]

2. This was a lot worse than I thought

The day's most remarkable feature was a direct and unprecedented personal clash between the US President, Barack Obama, and the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, in which Mr Wen took deep offence at Mr Obama's insistence – in public – that the Chinese should allow their promised cuts in greenhouse gases to be internationally verified. When the President, in an unyielding speech, said that without international verification "any agreement would be empty words on a page", that was too much for Mr Wen. He left the conference in Copenhagen's Bella Centre, returned to his hotel in the city, and responded with a direct snub of his own – he sent low-level delegates to take his place in the talks.

A high-level source told The Independent that the US President was amazed when he found who he was negotiating with, and clearly regarded Mr Wen's absence as a major diplomatic insult. He snapped: "It would be nice to negotiate with somebody who can make political decisions" although last night urgent diplomatic efforts were underway to try to bring the two leaders face to face for a second round of talks, to patch up the disagreement.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/obamas-climate-accord-fails-the-test-1845090.html

I may disagree with Obama's policies, but such a public insult to the President of the United States is also an insult to the nation he represents.

Oy!

[KoKo]

3. Obama missed the cue challenging people when folks thought he was a negotiater not Bush ...

Somebody got ahold of Obama and has told him he's not tough enough on other countries. Yet, we see at home he's not tough enough on Repugs and Cheney who spouts off at every turn acting like the elusive bin Laden who pops up every time a video is needed to whip the CNN Crowd into shape for supporting more war...endless war.

His speech there was a confrontational one from a position of weakness. Everyone knows we owe our whole economy these days to China and Goldman-Sachs. Obama acts as if he doesn't know that and he's NOT Reagan talking about "Tear Down the Berlin Wall." Hollow Bullying...it was embarrassing.

[tomm2thumbs]

4. On a graph, I wonder if this would be considered motion up, down or horizontal

in the big picture, that is

[CRH]

5. I'm not sure Obama can deliver on an agreement, ...

One wonders if Obama could actually deliver on any agreement reached. Kyoto was negotiated then failed ratification 98-0 in the Senate in 1998. New legislation is yet to make it out of committee in the senate, much less the 60 vote cloture on the floor. If the last week of HCR is any indication, well a disturbing pattern of half hearted failure seems to be the best this administration has been able to deliver.

http://www.ogj.com/index/article-display/3795105281/articles/oil-gas-journal/general-interest-2/government/2009/12/prospects-remain_uncertain.html

~~ snip ~~

Nick Snow 
OGJ Washington Editor 

WASHINGTON, DC, Dec. 16 --

Prospects for US climate-change legislation in 2010 remain uncertain as 2009 enters its final weeks.



Proposals under discussion, including a bill already passed by the House, include a requirement that US refiners take responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions not only of their operations but also of consumers of their products. Producers argue that the proposals insufficiently emphasize use of natural gas.



Three US senators continue to work on legislation but report little progress. Two more had introduced their own proposal, while backers of bills which cleared the US House and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are pressing for their adoption.


~~ snip ~~

I've given up waiting for a change I can believe in, and instead will practice my cynicism. Constant disappointment is no more productive.

[Judi Lynn]

6. If you want to know who's to blame for Copenhagen, look to the US Senate

If you want to know who's to blame for Copenhagen, look to the US Senate
Obama's attempt to put China in the frame for failure had its origins in the absence of American campaign finance reform
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 December 2009 20.00 GMT

~snip~
The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama.

The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation: either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown.

The British and US governments have blamed the Chinese government for the failure of the talks. It's true that the Chinese worked hard to mess them up, but Obama also put Beijing in an impossible position. He demanded concessions while offering nothing. He must have known the importance of not losing face in Chinese politics: his unilateral diplomacy amounted to a demand for self-abasement. My guess is that this was a calculated manoeuvre guaranteed to produce instransigence, whereupon China could be blamed for the outcome the US wanted.

Why would he do this? You have only to see the relief in Democratic circles to get your answer. Pushing a strong climate programme through the Senate, many of whose members are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the energy industry, would have been the political battle of his life. Yet again, the absence of effective campaign finance reform in the US makes global progress almost impossible.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/21/copenhagen-failure-us-senate-vested-interests