How Hard Is Obama Trying on Global Warming?

President Barack Obama is lucky that the health care reform endeavor is overwhelming the political system and causing concern among his liberal base, for it's distracting from a key matter where he has fallen short: climate change.

While on his current trip to Asia, Obama has had to acknowledge the obvious -- that a comprehensive treaty that truly restricts global warming emissions will not be negotiated at the international climate change summit scheduled for next month in Copenhagen. This past weekend, he and other world leaders reached an agreement to cobble together a modest interim pact that will supposedly lead to a binding treaty in 2010. But producing a binding treaty was the point of the Copenhagen gathering. A global-sized can is being kicked down the road.
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Sadly, none of this is surprising. Obama entered office, vowing he would do what George W. Bush had not: lead the world to a global climate accord. But the challenges were clear. Though China and India are heading to the top of the carbon-spewing charts, they have insisted that the United States, historically the number-one emitter, cut back first. Meanwhile, recalcitrant Republicans and coal-friendly Democrats in the Senate declared they wouldn't back any accord that didn't include tough limits for China and other emerging economies. A few months ago I described the mission of Todd Stern, Obama's chief climate change negotiator, this way:

It's a task akin to working a Rubik's Cube. To convince the developing nations to accept real cuts, Stern must demonstrate that the U.S. is serious about reducing emissions. To get Congress to go along, Stern has to show that the developing world will also make consequential cuts. But if [senators] don't accept the idea of different cuts for different countries, they may be less inclined to pass the carbon legislation Stern needs to goose the developing countries. Call it a Chinese puzzle. And the planet's future could be riding on his ability to put all the moving pieces in the right spots -- in just a few months.

Well, that Rubik's Cube has not come together. On a narrow vote in June, the House passed climate change legislation that set up a cap-and-trade system that would allow polluters to sell among themselves a decreasing amount of emissions credits. But the Senate has not. It's been subsumed by the health care debate; also, there may not be 60 votes needed to thwart a possible filibuster on a strong bill. Weeks ago, it became evident that even if sea levels rose 10 feet in a month, the Senate would not produce climate change legislation in time for Copenhagen.

Is this the president's fault? His administration has taken unilateral steps to reduce global warming gases produced by vehicles and coal-burning power plants. His stimulus bill reserved tens of billions of dollars for new green technologies. But as environmental writer Bill McKibben notes:

For a year now it's been clear that the president is not particularly focused on applying the political pressure that would have been necessary to reach any kind of pact, much less one that approaches what the science demands. Despite the deadline of the Copenhagen conference, Obama placed energy second on his priority list, guaranteeing that health care would occupy most of the year. He talked very little about climate, tending instead to talk about green jobs and energy security, and in the process left the door open for climate deniers to have a field day. And then -- as with health care -- he left it pretty much entirely up to Congress to write the necessary legislation. That kept him from having to bear the blame for a byzantine bill, but it also meant that the Senate -- the body from which he came, and whose culture he had to know -- could work in its usual style, without White House pressure.

McKibben also accuses Obama's climate negotiators of:

fibbing about the science -- reiterating over and over again that their goal is the "scientific standard" of 450 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. That's no longer scientifically accurate -- in the last two years, since the rapid Arctic melt in the summer of 2007, scientists have made it clear that a treaty that aimed at 450 ppm would be a treaty that left the planet free of ice, a planet where many current nations would disappear beneath the waves. We're at 390 now -- we're already too high.

The scientific consensus now is that 350 ppm ought to be the limit. That means reversing direction immediately, not increasing the percentage of global warming emissions in the atmosphere.

You thought enacting a public option is a heavy lift? Getting to 350 ppm would be far tougher. It would require Obama to pump up the volume, and for China and India to make serious commitments. Instead of aiming for this target, the Obama administration has focused on what's politically possible -- then failing to deliver on that. And once the exhausting health care debate is done, the White House will focus on jobs, jobs, jobs. And, oh yes, jobs. This is natural and necessary. Politicians must address political realities -- especially those immediate ones, such as joblessness. The problem is, global warming is a scientific reality. It cannot be spun. It cannot be placed on hold until the political circumstances are advantageous. Its most consequential impacts are not right at hand, but they cannot be addressed once they transpire. They must be dealt with before the emergency arrives, before there is no longer any argument or excuse for inaction.

That means climate change is an issue that calls for unprecedented leadership. And this challenge has been thrust upon Obama. At the end of the W. years, I thought that future historians might harshly judge Bush less for his invasion of Iraq than for his dithering on climate change. Obama is indeed trying on this front. But if he doesn't try harder, he could end up, decades from now, being paired with Bush, when the toddlers of today are then wondering, who let the planet burn?

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I must apologize. I have nothing in this column about Sarah Palin. For those of you in need of a Palin fix, check out this amusing story about right-to-lifers who will be protesting at the Indiana stop of her book tour. Why? Because they claim she is not sufficiently anti-abortion. The infighting on the right is rather bizarre these days