Obama Tries Optimism In Face Of Copenhagen Flop
Amidst growing talk from pundits of all political persuasions that the Copenhagen climate conference was a royal flop, President Barack Obama attempted to challenge these interpretations on Friday, saying the United States, China and other participants had achieved an “unprecedented breakthrough” in the battle to cut global climate emissions.
After months of anticipation and two weeks of intense political wrangling, diplomats from around the world “” including representatives from growing financial powerhouses like India, South Africa, Brazil and, of course, China “” have said that they will take action to cut pollution, though specific benchmarks and targets have not yet been announced.
Specifically, Obama mentioned that the U.S. along with the four previously mentioned nations had reached a pact that would ensure a mutually agreeable mechanism for verifying compliance with all new standards.
A European Union news conference to announce the EU reaction was postponed and an official said an overall agreement involving those nations not included in the deal that Obama announced was still being negotiated.
In a veiled statement, Obama mentioned that Friday’s agreement among the five countries might be adopted by the remaining summit participants.
“I am leaving before the final vote,” said the U.S. President. “[But] we feel confident we are moving in the direction of a final accord.”
Obama also cautioned the unresolved delegates at the conference that waiting around to reach a full-fledged deal could prove counterproductive.
If everyone waits around for a full, binding treaty, “then we wouldn’t make any progress,” which could risk engendering “frustration and cynicism” in the public and giving the world the impression that its leaders had taken “two steps back” rather than “one step forward.”
Along with the announcement of the five-nation agreement, Obama offered a caveat, saying that achieving a comprehensive, legally binding treaty “is going to be very hard, and it’s going to take some time.”
“We have come a long way, but we have much further to go,” he added.
While issuing strong words regarding the need for all the nations of the world to take a more selfless and aggressive stance in dealing with carbon emissions, he also conceded that there was a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives” between some of the developed, wealthy western powers and the up-and-coming nations, many of which still struggle with large-scale poverty and substandard infrastructure.
The first step towards any global agreement on climate change, said Obama, would be to develop a relationship of trust between wealthier nations of the West and poorer, less developed countries.
Despite the optimistic spin that most delegates are trying to put on the conference’s outcome, a critical reading between the lines reveals that whatever deal may be reached it will fall far short of the hype and great expectations that surrounded the summit.
Brazilian ambassador to the conference Sergio Barbosa Serra stated that there “may still be a way of salvaging something” from the meeting that might help “[pave] the way” for some future deal.
Adrian Macey of New Zealand referred to the deal as “modest [...] first step,”"”which is more or less political-speak for a diplomatic dud.
But in what can perhaps be seen as a more genuine commentary on the Copenhagen meeting, Macey called the waxing distrust between rich and poor countries during the course of the UN conference “appalling,” as both sides blamed the other for what amounted to a political stalemate.
President Obama seemed to recognize this as well.
“We are ready to get this done today but there has to be movement on all sides to recognize that is better for us to act rather than talk,” he said in his address to the assembled ambassadors.
But delegates from the U.S. came to the conference with a paucity of political capital. A number of delegates had been closing observing the U.S. and China””the world’s first and second largest polluters, respectively””in hopes that they would up the ante for the rest of the world by deepening their own promises to cut carbon emissions.
That, however, did not happen, and the United States is taking its share of flak for what seems to many nations to be unabashed hypocrisy.
“President Obama was not very proactive. He didn’t offer anything more,” said Thomas Negints of Papua New Guinea.
According to the Associated Press, one critical commentator, Greenpeace’s chief executive Phil Radford, went so far as to suggest that President Obama may go down in history as “the man who killed Copenhagen.”
A leading African delegate complained bitterly about the proposed declaration.
“It’s weak,” Sudanese ambassador Lumumba Di-Aping told the Associated Press. “There’s nothing ambitious in this text.”
As the clamor over the conference subsides and sober contemplation sets in in its wake, observers from all sides are finding themselves nodding their heads in agreement””perhaps for the first and last time ever””with Sudan.
—
On the Net: