Charles Babington And Jennifer Loven, Associated Press Yahoo News 19 Dec 09;
WASHINGTON – It was almost unthinkable. The president of the United States walked into a meeting of fellow world leaders and there wasn't a chair for him, a sure sign he was not expected, maybe not even wanted.
Barack Obama didn't pause, however. "I'm going to sit by my friend Lula," he said, moving toward Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
A Brazilian aide gave the U.S. president his chair, and Obama spent the next 80 minutes helping craft new requirements for disclosing efforts to fight global warming. Along with India, South Africa and Brazil, the key member in the room was China, which recently surpassed the U.S. as the world's top emitter of heat-trapping gasses.
At the table this time for China was Premier Wen Jiabao, not an underling as before. Obama was bent on striking a deal before flying home to snowbound Washington.
He would later hail the achievement as a breakthrough. But even Obama said there was much more to do, and climate authorities called Copenhagen's results a modest step in the global bid to curb greenhouse gasses that threaten to melt glaciers and flood coastlines.
Obama's 15-hour, seat-of-the-pants dash through Copenhagen was marked by doggedness, confusion and semi-comedy. Constrained by partisan politics at home, and quarrels between rich and poor nations abroad, he was determined to come home with a victory, no matter how imperfect.
Experts and activists may debate its significance for years. Some, like Jeremy Symons, who watched the talks for the National Wildlife Federation, said it was "high drama and true grit on the part of the president that delivered the deal."
Others were far less kind. The Copenhagen agreements are "merely the repackaging of old and toothless promises," said Asher Miller, executive director of the Post Carbon Institute.
Even though a weary, bleary-eyed Obama had added six hours to his planned nine-hour visit, he was back in Washington by the time delegates at the 193-nation summit approved the U.S.-brokered compromises on Saturday. The agreements will give billions of dollars in climate aid to poor nations, but they do not require the world's major polluters to make deeper cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.
This account of Obama's hectic day is based on dozens of interviews and statements by key players from numerous countries.
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Obama was thrown off schedule almost from the moment he landed Friday morning in Copenhagen, where the summit's final-day talks seemed to be collapsing.
Instead of attending a planned meeting with Denmark's prime minister, he plunged into an emergency session of about 20 nations, big and small, wealthy and poor. Right away there was a troubling sign.
China was the only nation to send a second-tier official: vice foreign minister He Yafei instead of Premier Wen, who was in the building. The snub baffled and annoyed delegates.
For months, Obama had been pressing China to put into writing its promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Obama later seemed unusually animated when he alluded indirectly to China in a short, late-morning speech to the full conference.
"I don't know how you have an international agreement where we all are not sharing information and ensuring that we are meeting our commitments," he said. "That doesn't make sense."
Things then appeared to turn for the better, as Obama and Wen met privately, as scheduled, for 55 minutes. A U.S. official said they took a step forward as they discussed emissions targets, financing and transparency.
The two leaders directed aides to work on mutual language, and Obama's team proposed specific wording meant to solidify China's promise to be more forthcoming about its anti-pollution efforts.
A short time later, however, the U.S. team was more baffled and irked than before. At a follow-up session of the morning's big meeting, the Chinese sent an even lower-ranking envoy in Wen's place.
An irritated Obama told his staff, "I don't want to mess around with this anymore, I want to just talk with Premier Wen," according to a senior administration official who spoke on background to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues.
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By now night had fallen, and it was clear Obama would be late getting home. He kept an appointment to discuss arms control with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Meanwhile he asked aides to try to set up a final one-on-one meeting with Wen, and a separate meeting with leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa. He hoped these fast-growing nations, which had been loosely aligned with China on many of the key issues, might influence the Chinese.
Confusion reigned. Chinese officials said Wen was at his hotel and his staff was at the airport. The same was said of top Indian officials, but nothing was clear.
South African President Jacob Zuma agreed to meet with Obama, then canceled when he heard the Indian leader was away, and Brazil would attend only if India did.
The Chinese said Wen could meet with Obama at 6:15 p.m., then changed it to 7 p.m. Obama used the time to talk strategy with the leaders of France, Germany and Great Britain.
Meanwhile, a four-nation negotiating team known as BASIC gathered. The modified acronym reflected its members: Brazil, South Africa, India and China.
Obama was unaware, however, thinking he was going to meet alone with Wen. After some confusion about who had access to the room, White House aides told the president that Wen was inside with the leaders of the three other countries, apparently working on strategy.
"Good," Obama said as he walked through the door. "Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me?" he called out. "Are you ready?"
Inside he found startled leaders and no chair to sit in.
U.S. officials denied that Obama crashed the party, saying he simply showed up for his 7 p.m. meeting with Wen and found the others there.
Whatever the meeting's original purpose, Obama used it to help strike an agreement on ways to verify developing nations' reductions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, a good U.S. ending to their talks with the Chinese.
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Other agreements that came from Copenhagen were a mixed bag, with some environmentalists keenly disappointed, and probably no nation entirely pleased.
Rich countries vowed to provide $30 billion in emergency climate aid to poor nations in the next three years, and set a goal of eventually channeling $100 billion a year to them by 2020.
The summit's final document said carbon emissions should be reduced enough to keep the increase in average global temperatures below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) since preindustrial times. But average temperatures already have risen 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) since then.
The nations most vulnerable to climate change, including low-lying islands, say the 2 degree C figure is already too high.
It was just after 1 a.m. EST Saturday when Air Force One landed outside Washington on the flight from Copenhagen. With a steady snow falling, Obama headed for the White House. It would be 3 1/2 more hours before the 193 nations, with a few objections, would agree to the deal brokered by the American president. A short time later the conference adjourned.
Later Saturday, Obama put the best face possible on the results.
"This breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come," he said from the White House Diplomatic Reception Room.
But he got no plaudits in the Chinese press.
The English-language China Daily newspaper called Obama's Copenhagen speech "grandstanding," and said it left non-governmental organizations at the summit disappointed.
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Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein, Michael Casey and Charles Hutzler in Copenhagen; H. Josef Hebert in Washington; and Cara Ana in Beijing contributed to this report.
Climate deal gives Obama limited victory
Richard Cowan - Analysis, Reuters 19 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A climate deal negotiated by the United States and other major carbon polluters will allow President Barack Obama to claim a limited victory, but enough to breathe new life into efforts to pass legislation in Congress.
Green Business | COP15
Following two difficult weeks of intensive negotiations among representatives of 193 nations, Obama arrived at the talks in the final hours and hammered out a deal in face-to-face meetings with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
The two men represent the world's leading emitters of carbon dioxide pollution from industrial smokestacks and automobile tailpipes -- the greenhouse gas that scientists fear could ruin the planet.
U.S. officials were quick to point out that this deal, which still requires hard negotiations on details over the next 12 months, fell short of what scientists think countries need to do to avoid potentially catastrophic flooding and drought from global warming.
But Obama ran for president in 2008 promising change and after eight years of the Bush administration's antagonism toward mandating carbon reductions, the new U.S. president can say he delivered on a major campaign promise to begin controlling global warming.
For his critics, Obama also can say that he wrung some concessions out of the big developing countries of China, India and South Africa. For the first time an international accord will capture their carbon cutting promises.
That could rob Republicans in Congress of an essential argument, that Congress should not be imposing limits on U.S. companies when big polluters like China were unrestrained and could thus steal U.S. jobs.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, who is trying to bring together enough Republicans and fence-sitting Democrats to pass a climate bill in the Senate, said the Obama-brokered "Copenhagen Accord" broke the back of international "bickering" and "sets the stage for a final deal and for Senate passage this spring of major legislation at home."
That might be. But several other important pieces must also fall into place, including:
-- Congress must promptly finish work on a healthcare reform bill that has dominated lawmakers' attention. If the healthcare fight stretches on too long, it will be too late into 2010 and too close to the November congressional elections for the Senate to act on the contentious climate bill.
-- Americans next year must believe an economic recovery is underway and creating jobs. If not, too many politicians will fear a political backlash by debating a climate bill that could lead to even marginally higher energy prices.
-- More Republicans must get involved. "There is no partisan option for passing this in the Senate," noted Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Some environmentalists hope that Obama will personally court his 2008 presidential opponent, Senator John McCain, who used to be a leader on climate change legislation but lately has done little but criticize.
As the various countries work out the details of this bare-bones pact before the next annual meeting in Mexico, all eyes will be on some of the most controversial aspects. Those include new monitoring and verification of countries' carbon reduction programs that Obama insisted upon to gauge whether China, India and others were live up to their promises.
Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, which enforces some of the toughest air quality standards in the U.S., told Reuters early this week that such provisions were essential.
"It's the first step in building an effective climate program...it establishes a common currency" for countries, she said.
But some environmentalists, who had placed great hopes in Obama, saw nothing but a cop-out in Copenhagen. "Climate negotiations...have yielded a sham agreement with no real requirements for any countries," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth U.S.
(Editing by Dominic Evans)
Flawed climate accord good for Obama at home
Stephen Collinson Yahoo News 19 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (AFP) – It will not cool the globe, but the new world climate accord may temper Washington's political heat for Barack Obama and it has crucially given him a deal he can defend at home.
The US president engineered the compromise with rising powers China, Brazil, South Africa and India, at the tense UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
"For the first time in history all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change," Obama said, putting the best possible spin on an agreement that many said fell short of the summit goals and what science demands to stem global warming.
An obvious flaw: the pact is not legally binding, and while it commits to limit warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) it fails to set targets for greenhouse gas emissions cuts.
But that very omission may make the accord palatable in Washington, where climate change scepticism is rising and critics warn Obama's energy revolution could squelch frail economic growth.
Obama came to Denmark under pressure to make concessions to Europe and developing states -- but stuck by his offer to only cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
He also dodged saying how much the United States would pay as part of a deal to help developing states tackle warming.
Holding that line may help preserve fragile support for a deal in the US Senate.
Copenhagen was another lesson for Obama in the application, and limits of US power.
He has smashed records for travel by a first-year president, but Obama has few foreign policy triumphs. Iran has spurned his hand of engagement, the Afghan war got worse, and his Middle East peace drive is stalled.
Domestic foes brand him a soft touch on the world stage and mock his failure in Copenhagen to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.
So going home empty-handed would have been another devastating blow, and Obama's dwindling approval ratings may benefit from accounts painting him as a diplomatic maestro behind the accord.
Some observers sought however to dampen the idea that it had been Obama alone who salvaged the conference.
"It was not driven by one leader, or two leaders, or three leaders," said Robert Orr, the UN's assistant secretary general for policy planning.
"I would have to count on two hands the number of leaders who played a really instrumental role."
In many ways, Obama's performance in Copenhagen revealed an emerging theme of his administration, which aimed at transformational change, but is now revealing a strong streak of pragmatic realism.
His "change" mantra has been diluted by reality on US health care reform, Middle East peace making, the Afghan troop surge and now climate change.
In each case, Obama scaled back lofty aims or qualified his ambitions, reasoning that politics is after all, the art of the possible.
This sparked cries of betrayal from some supporters intoxicated by candidate Obama's pure political potential and soaring rhetoric: though they do not face President Obama's obligation to fashion results from high expectations.
Obama reflected on his learning curve before flying home.
"One of the things that I've felt very strongly about during the course of this year is that hard stuff requires not paralysis but it requires going ahead and making the best of the situation that you're in at this point, and then continually trying to improve and make progress from there."
The accord is also grist for Obama's argument that his commitment to engagement has revived US prestige abroad an in international organisations.
Obama's allies rallied round to maximize the political payoff, as some of his top priorities face a rough ride in Congress.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid praised Obama's "leadership" while House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi added: "The president has secured a critical agreement."
Then there is the China question.
In his first year in office, Obama has painstakingly engaged Beijing and aides say he has formed a connection with Premier Wen Jiabao, who compared Copenhagen's operation.
But is his stock in Beijing sufficient to limit damage by his stern rebuke of Beijing's reluctance to embrace verification methods to check its compliance to climate pledges?
