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09/23/2009

On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama addressed nearly 100 global leaders gathered in New York for a one-day UN climate summit. The meeting was meant to give momentum to the major United Nations climate change conference to be held in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18. There, world leaders hope to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, with a new, comprehensive accord on climate change.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened Tuesday's gathering with a stern warning. "The climate negotiations are proceeding at glacial speed," he said. "The world's glaciers are now melting faster than human progress to protect them -- and us." Ban also added that failing to reach a new climate pact in December would be "morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise."

When it came his turn to speak, Obama used the forceful tones the world has come to expect from him. "The threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing," Obama said, adding that "we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe."

Obama also pledged to push through cuts in US emissions with measures such as launching offshore wind parks and supporting investments that capture carbon dioxide emitted from coal-fired power plants.

Drinking Decaf

Reactions to the meeting varied widely. In concluding the session, Ban said: "This summit has put fresh wind in our sails." Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who will host the summit in Copenhagen, said more tepidly that it was "a step in the right direction."

But Obama's failure to spell out any concrete proposals left some angry. "We are really very, very disappointed about what Obama said," Thomas Henningsen, the climate coordinator for Greenpeace International, told Reuters. "It is really more of a step back than a step forward."

"Someone must have switched the coffee to decaf at today's UN climate summit," Oxfam International spokesman David Waskow told the Associated Press. "Heads of state did not seem to have the necessary energy to deliver the drive we need heading into Copenhagen."

Many think that Obama's ongoing battle to overhaul the US health care system is consuming all his time and energy. In June, he did succeed in getting the US's first regulation on capping carbon emissions through the US House of Representatives. But the Senate has chosen to push back any handling of climate issues until after the rancorous debate on health care has been settled.

Observers feel that if the US doesn't have climate legislation in place by December, it won't be able to take any concrete stances in Copenhagen. And without US leadership, many believe that the meeting will fail to create an overall, detailed accord and that, at best, it will produce a framework for further talks somewhere down the line.

In Wednesday's newspapers, German commentators seem to agree with critics of Tuesday's summit. As they see it, no deal with the Senate means no deal in Copenhagen.

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"Well, at least the UN climate summit in New York Tuesday did make one concrete step forward. But the step has nothing to do with reduction goals or greenhouse gases. Instead, it has much more to do with one simple political realization: Forget Copenhagen."

"The long-awaited appearance of US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, before the United Nations showed that even a lot of negotiating skills are not going to be able to rescue the climate summit planned for Copenhagen in December. By then, neither the US nor China will have done enough to allow an agreement to be reached that would set firm CO2 reduction goals by 2050 or even by 2020 -- which is of course harder, but probably more urgent."

"The chances of having something come out of Copenhagen that is more than just a non-binding framework agreement sank even lower on Tuesday -- and they're headed toward zero. For this reason, it would be best to push the conference back until the US is prepared to take real steps in the negotiation process. Otherwise, there's a great risk that Copenhagen will result in a formulaic compromise that blocks any real progress for years to come because the major climate offenders can just hide behind them."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

"Disenchantment with Obama reigns at the UN. And understandably so, given that he had raised people's hopes that the US would adopt policies that conformed with international laws and that the US would play an active, multilateral role in tackling global challenges and regional conflicts. But these expectations have yet to be met."

"When it comes to climate protection, UN members know that the US Congress will block the president from playing the leading role on the international stage that he has promised by imposing concrete and far-reaching obligations for reducing CO2 emissions."

"In reality, though, criticism of Obama -- and particularly those coming from European governments -- ranges between hackneyed and dishonest. When it comes to his efforts to correct things like the Bush administration's severe human rights violations and contraventions of international law at Guantanamo, Germany and Obama's other 'loyal allies' have shamefully left him in the lurch and refused to explain the role that they played in these crimes. And in terms of climate protection, the EU's position is only slightly better than that of the US when it comes to reaching a new international agreement."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"On his trip through Europe in April, Obama's message of change and hope put many under a spell. But now, six months later, there is disenchantment among the majority of Americans and -- though to a lesser degree -- also among people around the world."

"The political capital that Obama has devoted to the health care battle is lacking in other places, both in domestic issues and on the world stage. For example, the prospects of having an energy and climate-protection law make its way through Congress before the negotiations for the new UN climate agreement start in December are dwindling. In Copenhagen, people will put about as much trust in American leadership as they do in believing that the US will live up to its promise to close Guantanamo by January."