Barack Obama’s speech disappoints and fuels frustration at Copenhagen
Barack Obama stepped into the chaotic final hours of the Copenhagen summit today saying he was convinced the world could act “boldly and decisively” on climate change.
But his speech offered no indication America was ready to embrace bold measures, after world leaders had been working desperately against the clock to try to paper over an agreement to prevent two years of wasted effort — and a 10-day meeting — from ending in total collapse.
Obama, who had been skittish about coming to Copenhagen at all unless it could be cast as a foreign policy success, looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders.
He offered no further commitments on reducing emissions or on finance to poor countries beyond Hillary Clinton’s announcement yesterday that America would support a $100bn global fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change.
He did not even press the Senate to move ahead on climate change legislation, which environmental organisations have been urging for months.
Fox News Poll: Majority of Americans Don’t See Global Warming As Crisis
While a majority of Americans believe global warming is happening, far fewer see it as a crisis.
A Fox News poll released Wednesday finds that a 63 percent majority of Americans say they believe in global warming, down from 69 percent earlier this year, and from a high of 82 percent in 2007.
Just over half of Americans (51 percent) believe in “man-made” global warming, that is, believe it is caused by human behavior (33 percent), or by both people and climate patterns (18 percent).
Less than a third (29 percent) believe global warming is caused naturally (11 percent climate patterns and 18 percent both human behavior and climate patterns).
Obama: ‘Time for talk is over’
A visibly angry Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet at China and other developing nations Friday, declaring that the time has come “not to talk but to act” on climate change.
Emerging from a multinational meeting boycotted by Chinese Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Obama warned delegates that U.S. offers of funding for poor nations would remain on the table “if and only if” developing nations, including China, agreed to international monitoring of their greenhouse gas emissions.
“I have to be honest, as the world watches us… I think our ability to take collective action is doubt and it hangs in the balance,” Obama told the COP-15 plenary session as hope for anything more than a vague political in agreement faded.
“The time for talk is over, this is the bottom line: We can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward. We can do that and everyone who is in this room will be part of an historic endeavor or we can choose delay,” he said.
He added: “The question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart… We know the fault lines because we’ve been imprisoned by them for years.”
Copenhagen climate summit: ‘most important paper in the world’ is a glorified UN press release
When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?
No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.
After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics.
But boy! Was this crass, or what? The apocalyptic document revealing that even if the Western leaders hand over all the climate Danegeld demanded of them, appropriately at the venue of Copenhagen, the earth will still fry on a 3C temperature rise is the latest transparent scare tactic to extort more cash from taxpayers. The danger of this ploy, of course, is that people might say “If we are going to be chargrilled anyway, what is the point of handing over billions – better to get some serious conspicuous consumption in before the ski slopes turn into saunas.”
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