Europeans are growing increasingly disillusioned with President Barack Obama’s failure to show international environmental leadership, with fears rising that high-level negotiations on climate change in Copenhagen in December may break down as a result. The European media is full of reports that the United States is once again regarded as the main obstacle to a new deal limiting greenhouse gas emissions, just as it was under the administration of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
A French newspaper asks whether Obama is “still green,” and a well-known German magazine suggests that he is not yet ready for a global climate change agreement. One British newspaper reports that EU officials are growing increasingly frustrated with the United States, while another contains a scathing commentary entitled Obama the Impotent, which suggests the U.S. president may be out of his depth. A Danish paper is calling for decisions to be postponed by six months, given that the Copenhagen conference risks turning into a fiasco because America is unprepared.
Asking whether Obama is still green, France-Soir says more and more voices are being raised in Europe to remind Obama of his electoral promises on the environment – promises today erased by the economic crisis and reform of the U.S. health care system.
Under the heading Yes We Can – But Not Yet, the international version of Germany’s Spiegel Online reports that “the climate debate has run aground in the U.S. Environmental protection has many opponents and they’re extremely well organized. Even President Obama’s own party is withholding its support.” The report continues:
The House of Representatives in June passed a climate law with tougher emissions rules. But it was diluted to such an extent that Brent Blackwelder of environmental group Friends of the Earth said: “The lobby for oil giants, dirty coal, farming giants and Wall Street castrated the law.”
This watered-down version of the law is still stuck in the U.S. Senate where Obama can’t even count on his fellow Democrats. But without U.S. leadership, a deal in Copenhagen looks impossible.
The Financial Times carries a report September 22 headlined Rift with U.S. Clouds Climate Summit, and another entitled EU Sees U.S. as Biggest Obstacle to Agreement. The FT says that whereas China and India used to be seen as the countries most likely to hang back on commitments to curb greenhouse gases, “Brussels policymakers are making a surprising re-evaluation: that the U.S. is more of an obstacle to a deal.”
An astonishingly hard-hitting commentary in The Guardian, Obama the Impotent, written by an American, says:
Many leaders and supporters are beginning to wonder what is causing this growing gap between the Barack Obama that many people saw on the campaign trail, and the Obama they see in the White House?
Beyond Obama’s oratorical skills, which excited not only American voters but people all over the world, he is mostly untested as a politician. . . . A sinking feeling is arising among many that President Obama may not be up to the task, that he may not possess the artful skills needed to accomplish even his own goals.
As a result, the writer concludes:
Unless Barack Obama is able to demonstrate a better level of political skill than he has shown so far, everyone needs to fasten their seatbelts. The world is about to enter a challenging phase where the U.S. – the undisputed leader of the free world for the past 60 years – is going to rapidly cede its place at the head of the line. It appears that the wheels may be coming off the world’s post-war leader, and not even Barack Obama can stop it happening.
In Denmark, site of the December conference, an editorial in the daily newspaper Politiken calls for the climate talks to be moved to next summer. “No one can be served by a pompous climate summit in Copenhagen which doesn’t bind the world’s major countries to a real reorganization of energy consumption,” the paper writes. It adds:
Following the announcement by the Democrats in the United States that they neither can nor will bind themselves to concrete climate targets prior to the summit in December, the likelihood of success in Copenhagen has fallen to zero. The dream of Denmark as the stage for a global rescue plan has burst. . . . On the contrary, the Climate Summit risks becoming a fiasco.
The Americans are, and will continue to be, decisive in the negotiations for a more ambitious replacement for the Kyoto Protocol. As long as Congress is not ready to give President Barack Obama a clear mandate, the other major countries are not going to bind themselves to extensive reductions in CO2 emissions either. . . . The time has come to consider a Plan B. The most obvious would be to call for a new conference next summer, so the Americans have time to negotiate a quota system.
